


Only Fools Rush In

by LullabyKnell



Series: LullabyKnell's One Piece Fics [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Arlong Park Arc (One Piece), Baratie Arc (One Piece), Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, East Blue Saga, Explicit Language, Flashbacks, Friendship/Love, Gem Fusion, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Grief/Mourning, Humor, Introspection, Light Angst, Loguetown Arc (One Piece), Loss, Mild Language, Orange Town Arc (One Piece), POV Roronoa Zoro, POV Third Person Limited, Potara/Fusion Dance, Relationship Study, Romance Dawn Arc (One Piece), Roronoa Zoro-centric, Slow Build, Swearing, Syrup Village Arc (One Piece), Wordcount: 30.000-50.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-09-23 21:06:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17087729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LullabyKnell/pseuds/LullabyKnell
Summary: Luffy seems to think nothing of fusion and it’s kind of driving Zoro up the wall. Or rather, since they’re stuck on this tiny vessel in the middle of East Blue together, it’s driving Zoro off the edge of the boat. Figuratively. Because no one just leaps into offering fusion like that, especially not to a complete stranger.~ One Piece canon AU with SU-style fusion. Used as character and relationship studies for Zoro.





	1. Romance Dawn and Orange Town

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Being Lawlu](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6583072) by [Kereea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kereea/pseuds/Kereea). 



> This fic was inspired by Kereea's brilliant [Being Lawlu](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6583072) fic, which was in turned inspired by smileorillfeedyoubread's super fun [fusion art](http://smileorillfeedyoubread.tumblr.com/bread-fusions), in which they each explore Steven Universe style fusion being a thing that people in the One Piece universe can do. I've loved fusion since my Dragon Ball days and I've loved SU's take on fusion, so I was a more than a bit breath-taken. 
> 
> I decided to use this AU concept to explore Zoro and his relationships, partly because I can kind of imagine Zoro honestly saying lines like "fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak [people] stronger", and partly because I just missed him. I've fallen a bit behind on One Piece and re-reading the first 100 chapters or so made me remember just how much I enjoyed the series and miss arcs that focused entirely on the main crew. They were all so young and they've all changed so much! Revisiting Zoro as a "feelings are dumb and can bite me" teenage loner has been super fun. 
> 
> This fic regrettably only covers the East Blue Saga, the arcs of which are Romance Dawn, Orange Town, Syrup Village, Baratie, Arlong Park, and Loguetown. I'd have to re-read the next saga to do anything more.

 “Hey, Zoro, let’s fuse to fight these guys!”

 Zoro’s chest is still heaving, his heart still pounding away against his ears. _Fuck,_ he thinks. _Fuck, I just nearly died. I’m not ready to die yet. I can’t die here. I can’t die like **this.**_ He can’t think of a worse way to die than tied helplessly to a cross in front of a firing squad… weak after nine days of starving and burning for no damn reason… _without his swords._

 He stares wide-eyed at Luffy, who just jumped out a window to take the bullets for him and saved his life. Luffy, who’s grinning wide like the bullets didn’t just punch into him and _bounce_ off back at the marines, or maybe because they _did._ Luffy, who has the impossible intention of becoming Pirate King and has demanded that Zoro, a pirate _hunter,_ join his pirate crew. Luffy, whom Zoro conditionally agreed to join, who has the three swords tucked under his arm as promised.

 “…What?” Zoro says. “Hey! Don’t drop my swords like that, dumbass!”

 “But I need both hands to get my new swordsman out of these ropes so we can fight together!” Luffy protests, as he pulls at the knots, apparently oblivious to the marines gaping behind him. “Ah, ah, these are tricky ones, Zoro! Let’s just fuse to get you out!”

 “I’m not… It doesn’t even fucking work like that! Just cut the fucking ropes!”

 Luffy pouts in disappointment, but picks up Wadou Ichimonji.

 “L-Luffy!” shouts the pale-haired, glasses-wearing kid who’s been trailing after Luffy, who tried to free Zoro before the firing squad arrived. “Luffy, hurry! The marines are regrouping! They’re drawing their swords! L-Lieutenant Morgan’s coming down!”

 “I’m hurrying! Why are knots so hard?” Luffy grumbles.

 The marines are bearing down on them, guns discarded and swords drawn, and Zoro thinks, _Fuck, maybe I am going to die after all._ He strains against the ropes as Luffy saws away and _finally,_ the ropes give. Just in time for Zoro to bite Wadou out of Luffy’s hands and draw his remaining two swords from their sheaths in the pale-haired kid’s shaking grip.

 He blocks the marines’ swords, all of them.

 It’s so fucking good to be free again… and free into a _fight_ is even better.

 “Wooow! Zoro, that’s so _cool!”_ Luffy shouts, while the pale-haired kid whimpers in relief and the marines stare in further horror. “You really do use all three swords! I wanna try it! Let’s fuse and fight these guys together!”

 Zoro grits his teeth on Wadou’s handle. It’s beginning to dawn on some of the marines’ faces to make another move, so Zoro pushes back against them. He spins, he cuts, he slashes, and he blows all these damn marines (who let him _rot_ ) away from him, Luffy, and the pale-haired kid.

 Once they have the space, once the bloodied, dishonourable, weak marines are sprawled limp around them or scrambling desperately for their fallen weapons, Zoro stands tall again. He takes Wadou of his mouth to speak. Axe-Hand Morgan might be bearing down on them now, bellowing in rage or some other shit, but Zoro turns to Monkey D. Luffy first to make _one damn thing clear._

 “I don’t need to _fuse_ with you to kick these guys’ asses,” Zoro says fiercely. “I’ll show you just how strong I am on my own!”

 Luffy just laughs. “So cool, Zoro! Alright!”

 

~

 

 Luffy seems to think nothing of fusion and it’s kind of driving Zoro up the wall. Or rather, since they’re stuck on this tiny vessel in the middle of East Blue together, it’s driving Zoro off the edge of the boat. Figuratively. Because _no one_ just leaps into offering fusion like that, especially not to a complete stranger. You’d have to be a special kind of idiot to trust everyone that easily, but Luffy acts like fucking _fusion_ is no big deal at all.

 That Coby kid later said that he thought the offer of fusion was super cool of Luffy, but he was weak and kind of naïve and really, _really_ weak. Not that Zoro didn’t like the kid, because he liked Coby just fine! Zoro admires the kid’s guts and determination to make something of himself. Coby wasn’t half-bad for a marine-wannabe weakling.

 But Zoro has survived for this long on his own, has become this strong on his own, because he doesn’t fuse with every smiley bastard who bounces his way and drags him off to sea to become a fucking pirate. Which, of course, there’s only been one of… but still, the points stand.

 Zoro’s dislike of fusion is twofold.

 The first point is that he doesn’t fucking trust people. Not in general and especially not like that. Zoro’s not that kind of stupid. He relies first and foremost on himself for everything, especially fights; he’s been taking care of himself for a long time. Fusing with anyone else is just going to drag him down, fuck up his style, and get him killed by accident. If not that, then the other person will turn on Zoro once he makes the mistake of letting them in and they’ll get him killed on purpose.

 Luffy might seem genuine, but Zoro has come too far… and he has too far still to go… to get himself _accidentally_ killed. Especially not accidentally killed going into a fusion to fight some weak marines just because some fucking bouncy ball thinks fusion is neat.

 Besides, Zoro took out Axe-Hand Morgan while Luffy punched out Morgan’s shit son. They couldn’t have done that if they’d been a fusion, so clearly they don’t need to fuse to have each other’s backs. They _shouldn’t_ fuse in a fight, even, if that whole situation proved anything. They can be comrades without going the extra step of throwing their whole damn everything together like that. They don’t need to fuse to fight together and be strong.

 That’s the second point. If Zoro is going to be the World’s Greatest Swordsman someday – which he _is_ – then he can’t rely on such a weak cheat as _fusion_ to get there. He’s going to get that title by his own merit and sacrifice, his own blood and sweat and tears, and no one else’s. What’s the point, otherwise? He’s not going to fucking _share_ the title.

 It’s not called the World’s Greatest Swords _men._

 Only one can stand at the top.

 

~

 

 Luffy’s offer of fusion to Zoro turns out not to be a one-time thing with him.

 When Zoro had originally confront his new captain about making such an absurd, intimate offer to a stranger, Luffy just shrugged and said he thought it would’ve been super cool and fun! And that he’d always wanted to try being a swordsman for a bit!

 “Three Swords Style is so _cool!_ Lemme try and bite your sword, Zoro! What?! Why not?!” Luffy demanded, reaching for Wadou despite Zoro’s hand holding his face back, apparently oblivious to how fucking embarrassing and disrespectful he’s being about… about _everything._ “You’re being so mean, Zoro! I just want to try it!”

 Zoro eventually chalked it all up to Luffy being naïve about… everything… and flatly told Luffy that most people didn’t fucking do that. Like this would stop Luffy. Like Luffy would actually pay attention to or give a damn about what _other people_ did.

 But then they got to Orange Town, Luffy by bird and Zoro rowing determinedly after the perpetually starving, food-motivated fool he’s thrown his lot in with, and they ran afoul of the Buggy Pirates. When Zoro finally reunited with his captain, Luffy was (and still is) tied-up in a cage, at the mercy of a literal clown. _(Oh, well,_ Zoro thought, _I’ve been itching for a good fight.)_ And when Zoro square off against Buggy the Clown and got stabbed in the back by the tricky Devil Fruit User for his troubles, Luffy made the offer to fuse _again._

 “Zoro! Come get me out and let’s fuse! Come fuse with me and get me out of here, Zoro!” Luffy shouts, banging his head against the bars, growling at the cackling, backstabbing clown who can apparently split himself into pieces. “It’ll make your wound better and we can kick his ass together!”

 “No!” Zoro shouts back, all the more determined to finish this by himself.

 “Ehhh? Why not?! Zoro!?”

 “What is it with you and offering to _fuse_ with people like this?” yells the orange-haired girl next to Luffy’s cage, who must be the thieving witch Zoro heard about on his way here, who seems to have been dragged into Luffy’s mess and madness. “Who offers _fusion_ like that?!”

 Wait, Luffy offered to fuse with _her?!_

 

~

 

 Luffy offers _again_ when Zoro is fighting Cabaji the Acrobat.

 That _might_ play a part in Zoro intentionally, stubbornly, spitefully making his own wound worse. He didn’t fuse with Luffy to fight the marines, so he’s definitely not going to go into a damn fusion to fight this fucking clown and his merry band of circus sideshows. He knows Luffy doesn’t really know what he’s offering and probably doesn’t mean the outrageous insult, but that only makes Zoro more determined to show his new captain just how strong he’s become all on his own.

 What will it _take?!_

 “I already told you, Luffy, I don’t need your help! What kind of World’s Greatest Swordsman would I be if I couldn’t win a fight against a second-rate swordsman like this?”

 He doesn’t want any strength he didn’t work for himself somehow.

 Luffy remains unoffended, even though this marks the third time Zoro has turned his bizarre, insulting offer of fusion down. In fact, Luffy grins widely and approvingly, while the orange-haired girl stares at the both of them like they’re absolute madmen.

 “Shishishishi! Alright, Zoro! I’ll leave it to you!”

 

~

 

 Luffy is apparently just supernaturally, stupidly naïve, such that Zoro has no fucking idea how the kid managed to survive this long. It must be that Gomu Gomu Fruit – every earnest attempt to do in Luffy’s rubber skull just bounces off. That and no one has accepted Luffy’s offers of fusion and broken his trust to teach him a fucking lesson; no one has looked at Monkey D. Luffy and stupidly thought, _Yeah, I want to be a piece of that. It’ll be worth it._

 So… it takes a while for it to click that Luffy isn’t actually offering fusion to every dickhead and asshole in a pirate’s hat or an eyepatch or whatever else Luffy finds unfathomably cool. Only the poor, unfortunate morons who get the honour of Luffy abruptly deciding they’re going to be his crew also get the honour of Luffy offering to fuse with them.

 He didn’t offer fusion to Coby, Zoro remembers. Luffy was willing to beat up horrible pirates and marines for the trembling kid, but he stopped far short of fusion. Luffy didn’t offer fusion to any of the weak Orange Town villagers either. But he apparently asked _Nami_ if she wanted to fuse with him – Nami, this orange-haired girl who avoided fighting and whom Luffy has decided is going to be their navigator. So, it’s not about strength, it’s about _crew._

 “But it’ll be fun!” Luffy is insisting.

  _Like mixing yourself up – your whole damn entire being – with someone else and giving them that sort of power over you is anything but stupid as fuck and for desperate weak shits,_ Zoro thinks grumpily. _Who’d knowingly want it?_

 He’s leaning against the railing of their little vessel, trying to find the right spot to make his newly-bandaged wounds comfortable, listening to the conversation between Luffy and their maybe-sort-of navigator as they sail away from Orange Town. Zoro really isn’t succeeding on the comfort thing. Damn, he wants to nap. He’s so tired.

 “I’m not fusing with you!” Nami screeches from the other boat. “I don’t even know you!”

 “So we get to know each other! By doing things like telling jokes and fusing and stuff!” Luffy says simply. (He doesn’t say anything not simply, really, and it’s getting on Zoro’s fucking nerves. Who is this kid to demand that the world make itself to simple for him?) “We’re nakama now!”

 Nami looks about as enthused to hear she’s being lumped in with them as Zoro feels about the idea of being lumped in with her. Like, really? Luffy wants _her_ for his crew? Luffy wanted to fuse with _her?_ Sure, she can navigate and whatever, but she doesn’t even like to fight.

 “I’m not joining your crew! I told you: I hate pirates! We’re just temporary _partners,”_ Nami stresses, for what’s possibly the dozenth time since they left Orange Town behind them.

 Zoro thinks it’s better this way. Nami might’ve proven herself a quick and ruthless wit, even in the fights she tries to avoid, but she’s also shamelessly proven herself a cheat, a liar, and a thief. Luffy might not be able to see it, but this orange-haired witch is obviously up to something, maybe more than one something. Her eyes are too sharp and too quick – like darts – for her not to be up to something. Zoro’s known a lot of guys with that look.

 “Oi, oi, Luffy,” he says. “You shouldn’t trust that witch like that.”

 Nami scowls at him. “Who are you calling a witch?!”

 “He’s calling you a witch,” Luffy says grinningly, before he puts his chin in his hands and pouts. “You should join my crew, Nami! She’s going to join our crew, Zoro! Because that’s what nakama do: they trust each other and fight together and sail together and sing songs together and eat meat together! It’s great! And fusion is _fun!”_

 Zoro and Nami stare at him.

 Inwardly, Zoro decides that no one is allowed to call him, Roronoa Zoro, the most simple-minded son-of-a-bitch on the Blues again. Zoro likes fighting and eating as much as the next guy (although, the next guy is Luffy, but Zoro’s equal on the fighting front at least), he even likes a bit of good company every now and again, but fucking hell, doing all of that with a group of people all the time? Zoro’s spent enough time alone that that sounds kind of like a nightmare. That sounds like a damn kid’s idea of how the world should be, like a _six-year-old’s_ idea of a pirate crew or something.

 At least Nami, this sticky-fingered and shrill-talking witch Luffy’s decided to going to be part of his crew, looks at disbelieving and dubious as Zoro feels, and isn’t taking Luffy up on his offers. Even witches know that fusion with strangers is for fools, and that fusion in general is for fools who don’t know better.

 Even if Luffy is… really, _really_ strong… and surprisingly capable and cunning in a fight… and has pretty much had Zoro’s back from the beginning. Even if Luffy respects Zoro enough not to interfere with his fights, trusts Zoro to be strong without him, even _expects_ Zoro to get stronger without him, and really, really isn’t a coddler. Even if Luffy probably doesn’t have the brains to pull off a double-cross even if he ever wanted to.

 Even if Luffy just… barges in and thoughtlessly, genuinely, grinningly challenges Zoro like no one’s challenged him in a really long time, determined to drag Zoro to the very top after him. Even if Luffy is actually pretty fun be around. Even if Zoro wants to tear his fucking hair out sometimes (his own or Luffy’s, he’s not picky), he’s definitely not _bored,_ which would be infinitely worse. Even if it’s been a long time since Zoro laughed this hard or this much with someone… even if it’s been a long time since he met someone who honestly, wholly _gets_ his dream and how far he’ll go for it…

 Even if fusion isn’t for forever…

 It’s not worth the risk.

 

~

 

 Nami isn’t so quick to let Luffy’s simple worldview go, which wakes Zoro up from his nap, which doesn’t put him in a good mood. Nami is definitely willing to fuck them over at some point – everything about her says that she’s sell them both for half a Beri – so she ought to be glad that Luffy’s kind of stupid and that Zoro’s kind of lazy, but apparently not.  

 Zoro feels a little smug about this, underneath the exhaustion, because _he_ figured out pretty quickly that there was no honest understanding this rubber idiot. Zoro is pretty sure that getting Luffy to explain things just makes it worse, actually.

 “You can’t… You can’t just trust everyone you meet like that!” Nami insists again.

 “I don’t trust everyone!” Luffy objects.

 “You offered to fuse with me to fight Buggy because you thought it would be fun!” Nami cries, still figuratively beating her head against this rubber brick wall. “You didn’t even know me! Why would you trust me like that! I don’t even _like_ fighting!”

 Hah. Zoro knew it.

 Zoro cracks open an eye to see Luffy hanging his head, pouting again.

 “I haven’t fused with anyone in a really, _really_ long time, alright?” Luffy says plaintively. “And you’re a part of my crew now! You’re nakama! Why wouldn’t I trust you?”

 Nami looks ready to scream at him, which is pretty damn funny, except for how Zoro kind of shares her opinion on this and has actually fully signed up for being dragged along after this fusion-happy rubber idiot for the foreseeable future. He doesn’t know whether it’s better or worse that it’s not actually total inexperience fuelling Luffy’s fusions offers, it’s just hasn’t-been-burned-yet naivety with a side of general _dumbass._

 “We’re just partners!” Nami reiterates.

 “Ehhh, no, you should be my navigator! That’s much better.”

 “I said _no!”_

 Why shouldn’t Luffy trust them?

 Because everyone wants something. Everyone wants something and people want different things: Luffy wants to be the next Pirate King and Zoro wants to be the World’s Strongest Swordsman. Because they barely fucking know each other and, even if they did, crap like fusion would only get in someone’s way. Yeah, Zoro has joined up with Luffy for now, but that doesn’t mean his goals and fights are always going to line up with this straw-headed straw-hat’s adventures.

 He told Luffy as much when they first met and fought together. Luffy was cool with it.

  _“I still have my own goals! I’m going to become the World’s Greatest Swordsman! Bad guy, good guy, it no longer matters! As long as my name is known world-wide!”_ Zoro announced, when he fought the marines and kept his word on joining Luffy’s crew, becoming a pirate and outlaw. _“If you do something that ends up in the way of my goal, I’ll have you cut open your stomach to say sorry!”_

 _“Good!”_ Luffy answered brightly, like he meant it. _“To be the World’s Greatest Swordsman, since you wanna be the Pirate King’s crew member; if you can’t even accomplish something that small, then I’d be very embarrassed as well!”_

 If Zoro _can_ follow Luffy to the very top, he will, because he said he would. He’s been a pirate-hunter and a pirate both now, but he’s never stopped being a man of his damn word.

 But Luffy is chasing a dream some would deem even more impossible than Zoro’s, and Zoro is pretty sure that it’s actually going to come down to a choice eventually. Something will come along and tear them apart. Sooner or later in life, Zoro has found, there’s always going to be a choice.

 And when that challenge comes, if Zoro ever must choose between becoming the World’s Greatest Swordsman and saving these so-called “nakama” he’s falling in with here… if Zoro ever must choose between achieving his own dream and supporting Luffy’s fool’s dream of becoming the next Pirate King… well…. The choice there is obvious, isn’t it? Zoro’s dream is going to come first.

 He wouldn’t even hesitate.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, I honestly wonder how Luffy managed to find the ONE GUY in all of East Blue who was just as much a reckless, amoral dream-chaser as himself. Like, I forgot how hardcore Roronoa Zoro is?? Either he was always like this or, at some point, this already stubborn kid must have decided to be _Like That._ Or a combination of both? Because it seems to me that Zoro took one look at Monkey D. Luffy’s particular form of madness and thought to himself, “Fuck, I need to step up my game,” and _Never Looked Back._
> 
> Also, oh, sweet dramatic irony.


	2. Syrup Village

 It’s a long-nosed liar who’s the first one to fuse with Luffy.

 Zoro thinks that Usopp is a pretty good guy. He was impressed when Usopp lied to his crew of little kids about the coming pirates, so that Usopp could face the threat alone. What these Black Cat Pirates are up to is scummy as hell and it’s admirable of Usopp to want to defend his village and his friends from them, even and especially in the face of overwhelming odds.

 But Zoro also thinks that Usopp has a long fucking way to go to become the “brave warrior of the sea” he claims to be. Usopp is weak and cowardly, possibly even more so than Nami the Thief, and he’s really a damn terrible liar. Usopp also tried to interfere with Zoro’s fight against the Black Cats’ Nyanban Brothers, like Zoro is some weak fucking coward who needs someone else’s help to win a fight. Sure, Usopp’s got a decent sense of honour and he’s got a sly sense of humour, but… weak and cowardly and trying to get a piece of Zoro’s fights from the side-lines? Yeah, that’s not cool.

 But Luffy seems to like Usopp a lot. They have some kind of connection through their parents or something like that, and Luffy’s happily willing to humour all of the long-nose’s outrageous and super obvious lies about being an undefeated and unmatched warrior of the seas. Luffy likes Usopp enough to want him for his crew and enough to fight the Black Cat Pirates for Usopp’s Kaya.

 Zoro kind of wants to demand what the fuck Luffy’s criteria for crew members actually is, beyond the short list of dubiously important roles Luffy announces he wants to fill. As glad as Zoro is that Luffy doesn’t plan on getting another swordsman or some shit, his ego isn’t enjoying the fact that cowardly weaklings like Nami the Thieving Witch and Usopp the Cowardly Liar are making Luffy’s cut. But Zoro knows that he wouldn’t even begin to understand Luffy’s standards, so he doesn’t really ask, even if he might shout at his captain for being an incomprehensible dumbass.

 Luffy and Usopp fuse even before the lying long-nose joins their ragtag crew of wanton destruction, so that they can fight Captain Kuro together. Luffy makes the offer and Usopp is desperate enough and angry enough at the pirate-turned-butler-turned-pirate to naïvely agree to something so intrusive and foolish.

 Zoro is getting the sense that fusion might be Luffy’s ideal version of a fucking job interview.

 Luffy and Usopp pull together, looping their arms, and spin in a quirky little jig. Usopp is grinning (or grimacing, it’s hard to tell) with fierce determination and Luffy is laughing excitedly as they dance, and they fuse together with that distinct, unchanging golden light.

  **“Shishish _wahahah!”_**

 Usopp-Luffy throws back his head and laughs, his chest puffed out, one set of arms akimbo and another set punching up towards the sky. The fusion is taller than short Luffy and the lanky Usopp, about seven feet tall maybe, tall enough to probably look Captain Kuro in the eye if not to look down on him. The imperfect fusion has four eyes as well as four arms, a wild mane of curly black hair, dark brown skin, a long nose (of course), and a frankly enormous mouth.

 In the face of this unexpected fusion, Kuro looks pretty damn stunned.

 Zoro feels pretty damn stunned too. He knew _someone_ would eventually take Luffy up on the offer, if he wouldn’t, but _still._ It’s a damn good thing that the weird Nyanban Brother he’s fighting is also shocked, so Zoro can stare freely for a few seconds.

 “CAPTAIN KURO!” the fusion shouts confidently (and _god,_ he’s _so fucking loud)._ “THE BRAVE SEA WARRIOR, **CAPTAIN USOLU,** THE UNDEFEATED RUBBER MAN AND FUTURE PIRATE KING, IS GOING TO KICK YOUR ASS _IN ONE HIT!”_

 Kuro returns to being seethingly unimpressed with the whole thing and charges.

 Zoro must return to his own fight, but he still follows the other.

 Usolu raises his slingshot quickly, fires without hesitation, seemingly without aiming until the pellet bursts over Kuro’s face and temporarily blinds the man. And Usolu is already winding up with his second set of arms so that, in quick succession, he delivers a stretchy punch so furious hard that Kuro the Black Cat of 100 Plans, of the absurd speed and lengthy claws, goes _flying._

 “STAR PISTOL!” Usolu shouts. “OR IS IT RUBBER STAR? **RUBBER STAR PISTOL PUNCH!** ”

  _God, that’s fucking awful,_ Zoro thinks.

 It’s not a one-hit win as promised, but Kuro smashes in the ground and, when he staggers up again and snarls, it’s clear that he’ll be needing some new teeth. The subordinate Zoro is fighting is absolutely fucking flabbergasted by this turn of events, which allows Zoro to deal another solid, debilitating blow and finally _finish_ this bizarre cat man who won’t stay the hell down.

 Kuro charges Usolu again and _again_ Usolu fires with his slingshot and delivers Rubber Pistols ruthlessly, excitedly, with remarkable precision and coordination, shouting and laughing the entire time. It’s… it’s actually perhaps the most impressive fusion that Zoro has ever seen with his own eyes. Even though they don’t even know each other. Even though they’re imperfect. He kind of wants to fight this Usolu. Just to test his strength.

 The fusion works pretty damn well for a while, but it inevitably goes wrong, as fusions always do. Someone is always all into it and someone always has one foot out.

 It’s the Usopp side of Usolu who abruptly loses all of his meagre nerve for the fusion and the fight. It happens because Kuro stops charging in to get shot with a Star or Rubber Pistol, so Usolu has to bring the fight to Kuro, and the Usopp side must belatedly realize that he’s running _towards_ a fight instead of _away_ from it. Usopp’s cowardice (or panic response or whatever) apparently kicks in _hard._

 Suddenly, Usolu has four legs. (Five? Six? Four again?) Half of Usolu’s legs are trying to run away from Kuro and half are still trying to go towards Kuro, which just doesn’t fucking work. Usolu’s mouth also splits in two, both mouths screaming, but while one is still a battle cry, the other one is just crying in terror. In the space of a few seconds, Usolu tears himself apart.

 Usopp and Luffy are spat out of the twisting golden light of their broken fusion, back onto the ground as separate people again.

 Luffy lands face-down and butt-high in the dirt, but he just flips over and laughs. Zoro’s mad captain grins delightedly at Usopp, then sends Zoro and the long-nose off after Kaya and the kids, who are still being pursued by Kuro’s hypnotist Jango.

 Then Luffy flings himself back into the fight, to meet Kuro’s claws with an all-teeth grin, so he can finish kicking the 100 Plans Black Cat’s ass all by himself.

 

~

 

 “Shishishi!” Luffy says afterwards, while Usopp and Nami and maybe Zoro (just a bit) stare at him with wide eyes. “Hey, Usopp! That was pretty good for a first fusion! Let’s do that again sometime!”

 

~

 

 Usopp joins their ragtag crew, which is getting bigger by the island. He’s the only one to be actually surprised by this, since Zoro and Nami read that decisive glint in Luffy’s eyes just fine early on. Luffy’s gotten far too fond of the guy, who’s surprisingly easy to be fond of for a weakling suffering from bouts of extreme cowardice and compulsive lying, not to invite him along.

 And Usopp actually _fused_ with Luffy.

 Zoro waits for Usolu to appear again. After all, the fusion worked out for Usopp and Luffy, didn’t it? Shouldn’t they be dancing around like gold-blinded fools all the time now? Shouldn’t they want to fully celebrate their newfound strength and skills? Shouldn’t they want to test and push the limits of their power? Shouldn’t they want to make it perfect? To be together all the time?

 But Luffy doesn’t seem to have any interest in fusion unless there’s a fight going on. Sure, Luffy talks about how cool the fight with the Black Cat Pirates was, how cool the fight with Kuro the Black Cat was, and how super cool it was to fuse with Usopp! But Luffy doesn’t ask Usopp to fuse again, doesn’t offer, and doesn’t say anything helpful about it.

 “Wow, Usopp! That was so fun! You think so fast and you see so much! Is that why you’re panicking all the time? Because everything is so much all the time? Shishishi!”

 Besides that, their fool of a captain is much more interested in laughing at the lying long-nose’s many outlandish stories, in oohing and aahing over their new ship, the admittedly pretty nice _Going Merry,_ and showing off their bird-and-fish-catching skills to add more meat to their meals.

 Fucking hell, they need a real cook.

 Zoro is the oldest person here and, besides Nami, he has the most experience with sea travel and managing travel in general, and it is absolutely fucking exhausting being the adult on this ship. No, really, he’s the _adult_ on this ship, everyone else is only seventeen or eighteen, and he’s trying not to think about it, because he’s still only nineteen, damn it, he’s not some stuffy fucking grown-up. He’s _not that sort of adult._ But Usopp’s self-sufficiency on the sea is still limited and Luffy is a fucking _disaster_ in all respects.

 Keeping Luffy fed is a full-time job and the rest of their little crew refuse to fall in line with Zoro’s sensible _“I will eat anything rather than starve, because I’m not a picky dumbass, so what if I can barely cook, that sounds like a you problem”_ attitude. He can’t leave everything to damn Nami – firstly, he still doesn’t totally trust her and secondly, she won’t do it – no matter how much he’d rather nap off his injuries and get some new training in after their latest fights.

 Anyway, it falls to Zoro to pluck the stupid sea bird that Luffy catches.

 It also falls to Zoro to straight-out ask Usopp what fusion with Luffy was really like.

 Usopp is clearly surprised by the question, probably partly because Zoro hasn’t really talked much to him so far, not outside of the Black Cat Pirates fight and some shared teasing as a group. The rest of the surprise might be because it’s…

 Look, Zoro knows it’s a rude fucking question. But Zoro’s never been a polite fucking person, and their mad captain keeps going around asking _his_ rude fucking question about fusion. Luffy’s the one who started with this intrusive fusion shit. Besides, Usopp can just tell Zoro to fuck off if he doesn’t want to answer, or just stammer his way through some bizarre excuse until Zoro goes away or whatever, which is far more likely.

 Instead, Usopp goes quiet for a long moment, as he thinks the question over seriously. Which is good, because Zoro could really use a decent answer and will totally punch the lying long-nose if Usopp tries to feed him some brave sea warrior bullshit over this.

 “Everything was a lot simpler,” Usopp says finally, sheepishly. “A lot more focused.”

 Simple and simpler sound like Luffy. Zoro is about to say that focused doesn’t sound like that straw-headed straw-hat idiot at all, but… well… no. Luffy can be focused when it comes to a real fight.

 And Luffy’s heart is like a damn compass pointed right towards Raftel.

 “Usolu was so _brave_!” Usopp continues, the words seeming to burst out of him now. “He wasn’t afraid of Klahadore – I mean, Captain Kuro – at _all!_ Because he knew he was going to win! He was strong and had to win for his friends, so he was going to! So, there was no reason to be scared! He wasn’t worried! And he was _so good_ at fighting and making cunning plans! He had no hesitation! None! He was a _true_ brave warrior of the sea!”

 Zoro hums. That’s… not exactly what he was looking for, but it’s… definitely something. Luffy and Usopp’s goals lined up in the fight against Kuro, so they fused and fought well despite barely knowing each other, until the whole thing became too much for Usopp and he lost his nerve.

 What Zoro really wants to understand, though, is why someone as strong as Luffy keeps doggedly offering fusions to people. Luffy isn’t weak enough to actually need it to fight. Luffy can be pretty selfish in a fight too, almost as stubbornly against sharing an opponent as he is with sharing his meat, so why is fusion the exception? Does he just want a piece of every fight for himself? Is that it? Is Luffy really eager to do something so foolish with strangers just for a little fun?

  _He's going to get himself killed like this,_ Zoro thinks, not for the first time. Even if someone doesn’t fuck Luffy over eventually, Luffy shouldn’t be doing something so weak if he wants to be strong enough to achieve his dream. They don’t call the title the Pirate _Kings,_ after all.

 Usopp sits back against the Merry’s railing and sighs.

 “I wish I could be that brave all the time,” he says wistfully.

 Zoro stares at him, brows furrowed.

 “…What’s stopping you?” he demands. “Fusion’ll only hold you back in the long run anyway. You can’t rely on someone else to be everything for you.”

 Usopp gives him an odd look for that, but then the heart-to-heart weirdness this conversation has become must twig on him too.

 “OF COURSE!” he declares, sitting bolt upright again. “THE BRAVE SEA WARRIOR USOPP IS MORE THAN STRONG ENOUGH ON HIS OWN! Once, you know, I made a plan so brilliantly cunning that a hundred pirate ships were sunk before the fight even began~!”

 Zoro rolls his eyes.

 “The battle happened with everyone standing on the backs of sharks~!”

 “WHOA, REALLY?!” Luffy shouts, from the other side of the ship.

 “Of course! I even made a great necklace of a hundred shark teeth to prove it!” Usopp shouts back, then overdramatically pats himself down and gasps. “OH NO! I must have forgotten it at home! It’s so heavy and sharp that ordinary people faint with terror at the very sight of it!”

 Zoro wonders if the brave sea warrior Usopp can fucking swim, if he pushes the guy off the ship for being such a terrible liar. He doesn’t, though, because Luffy and Nami will want to save Usopp if he can’t swim, and Luffy _really_ can’t fucking swim and Nami the Witch won’t want to get her hair wet if she can make Zoro do the work.

 He goes back to plucking the sea bird instead, so he can make the shitty food that all these soft-stomached, spoiled children (oh, _fuck,_ Zoro sounds _old,_ this is some real bullshit right here) will whine about later.

 

~

 

 The fact that they desperately need a cook for the long journey ahead of them is underlined when Luffy gets bored of everything that was distracting him before: Usopp’s stories, looking for food, bothering Nami, drooling over food daydreams, re-enacting the Syrup Village fights, and taking about the coolness that was Usolu. Luffy and Usopp decide to test out the cannons of their new ship, the _Going Merry,_ a parting gift of thanks from Usopp’s Kaya.

 Cannons shouldn’t lead to cooks, but the rock outcropping that Luffy and Usopp decide to test fire on has a pair of pirate hunters on it. Luffy and Usopp actually manage to _hit_ their target, completely unaware of the occupants, which leads to Usopp being officially dubbed their sniper by their captain, and also leads to the pair of pirate hunters fusing into one and attacking the Going Merry.

 Being boarded by a fusion shouldn’t lead to cooks either, but the fused pirate hunters turn out to be some of Zoro’s old partners: Johnny and Yosaku. And Yosaku has scurvy. Dumbass. Nami the Witch has them cure Yosaku’s scurvy and they collectively realize that they’ll need a cook to stay _healthy_ on the Grand Line, not just to stay fed.

 Which is a point. Zoro doesn’t want to admit that Nami is right about much of anything – because she’s up to something and _smug,_ even if she’s sensible and capable and sort of funny – but if shitty food is going to leave him weaker than he could be, then they should probably get a cook. Also, there’s the whole “feeding the bottomless pit that is Luffy” thing, which Zoro is already fucking done with, which Usopp couldn’t do forever either, and which Nami can’t be trusted with and straight-up won’t do if she can make literally anyone else do it.

 Also, Luffy wants a cook, so they’re getting a cook soon come hell or high water.

 Johnny and Yosaku tell them about a floating restaurant, called the Baratie, not far from where they are now, where Luffy might find a cook for their crew. A restaurant on a ship sounds… tough as shit, actually, and kind of cool. Zoro is reluctantly interested.

 A cook who’s at least somewhat familiar with the dangers of the Blues would be way better than some soft-skinned, soft-hearted home cook who’s never left their island before and screams at the first sign of danger (Usopp). Though Zoro inwardly resigns himself to probably having to protect and put up with yet another cowardly weakling anyway. It’s going to be just Zoro’s luck to get some soft-skinned, soft-hearted cook. Besides, honestly, how tough can some cook be?

 Plus, Johnny and Yosaku have rumours of Hawk-Eyes, the man currently holding the title of _World’s Greatest Swordsman,_ being in the area of the Baratie. That cinches it. Zoro will row Luffy’s ass to this damn floating fryer if he must, so that Luffy can get his cook and Zoro can get his fight.

 They set sail for the Baratie.

 And Johnny and Yosaku come to Zoro for company and catching-up on the way.

 Johnny and Yosaku were some of the longest and probably the best bounty-hunting partners Zoro ever had. They never screwed him over or anything, they even called him brother by the end of it, and Zoro became fond of them too, when they weren’t being dumbasses. He trained them a bit, they sparred with him plenty, and they’re not as weak as they could be. Zoro parted from them amicably, with lots of tears on Johnny and Yosaku’s end, when Zoro decided that they were holding him back and that he needed to strike out on his own again.

 “Brother Zoro, you’re a pirate now?!”

 “Yeah,” Zoro says.

 Zoro doesn’t really want to talk about his own dumbass life decisions of late, because he has no idea how to explain the whirlwind called Monkey D. Luffy, so he turns the conversation on Johnny and Yosaku’s dumbass life decisions instead.

 “The fusion’s new,” he says to them.

 Johnny and Yosaku shuffle in embarrassment. The fusion isn’t totally new. Zoro’s seen them fuse once by accident and once in a moment of desperation, highly imperfect fusions both times, but they always seemed to agree with him that every true swordsman had to become strong on his own… _without_ cheats like fusion.

 “We got into a bit of trouble when you left, Brother Zoro!” Johnny says.

 “We weren’t strong without you!” Yosaku agrees.

 “The only way that we can win our fights anymore is by becoming Johsaku!”

 “We’re sooorry, Brother!”

 “We just didn’t want to diiie, Brother Zoro!”

 “…Yeah, that makes sense,” Zoro tells them, before they start weeping on him or some shit.

 They’re emotional guys, Johnny and Yosaku, and that’s fine for them, but Zoro’s never been good at this heart-to-heart shit. He’s not putting up with getting cried on all over again. These two can just keep going past the point where ordinary people would have died of dehydration. If Zoro wanted his shirt soaked in salty water, he’d jump off the side of the ship or something.

 Johnny and Yosaku stop blubbering and look at him with wide eyes.

 “Really?”

 “Well, yeah, you don’t have to die if you don’t want to,” Zoro says.

 Like, that’s up to them. Zoro isn’t going to tell them to keel over or let themselves get gutted just because he disapproves of fusion. That’d be stupid. Johnny and Yosaku are life-partners (what sort, Zoro doesn’t know and doesn’t care) as much as they are bounty-hunting partners, so they’re probably not going to fuck each other over. They know and trust each other; they love each other; they’d probably even die for each other. Their fusion is perfect now and everything.

 But Luffy knocked the fusion Johsaku back into Johnny and Yosaku with one Rubber Pistol punch, before Zoro recognized them and stopped the fight. Relying on fusion to win all their fights for them is still stupid, weak shit. Yosaku was _sick,_ for fuck’s sake. Damn, it’s good that Zoro left them behind him; he really was carrying their dead weight, wasn’t he?

 Personally, Zoro would rather just fucking die than taking on all his future fights as a fusion. That’s… so weak. He’s strong enough in a fight for two people on all his own. He’s made sure of that.

 “Brother Zoro, you’re so wise!” Yosaku wails. “So kind!”

 “Thank you, Brother Zoro!”

 “…What the fuck are you apologizing and thanking me for?” Zoro demands.

 He just never wants to be that fucking weak. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zoro and Nami, simultaneously: "Oh, god, I'm the only adult on this stupid ship." (Then Sanji shows up and @s the boys, like, "Damn, shitheads, you live like this???" And Nami's like, "Oh, thank god, another civilized person.") 
> 
> It never fails to crack me up that Luffy was actually raised in the wild.


	3. Baratie

 The Baratie is just as badass as Zoro thought it might be, as far as restaurants go, even if it is shaped like a fish and generally kind of tacky. There’s something real fucking cool about a bunch of cooks toughing it out here on the ocean, pirates and marines and monsters be damned, just because they’re that dedicated to their craft. Zoro personally can’t understand the appeal of being a damn cook, but he can at least appreciate that sort of ballsy stubbornness.

 He can also appreciate the food. _Damn._ Zoro’s a big fan of not starving, so he’s not picky... he can’t tell one type of fish from another most of the time… and he’d just appreciate not having to cook it himself and not having to feed Luffy, but this is… this is the good shit.

 Good food… good entertainment in watching these weird-ass cooks threaten their own damn customers… and the first good lead Zoro’s had on the Hawk-Eyes bastard in ages. Zoro doesn’t have to help repay the boss cook for Luffy accidentally breaking a part of the Baratie’s roof before they even got off the damn Merry, which was fucking hilarious, by working as an errand boy alongside his gut-bustingly incompetent captain. No, Zoro can just sit back, nap, and let his stupid wounds heal properly. So long as Luffy finishes up this errand boy and finding a cook business quickly, so Hawk-Eyes’ trail doesn’t go cold, it’s all good here.

 The cook-turned-temporary-waiter Luffy seems to have set his heart on, despite the guy’s fierce unwillingness and fiercer objections, is kind of a dickhead, though.

 Like, the shitty cook is sort of deadpan hilarious, being an unrepentant asshole to some of his own customers and fearlessly shouting at Luffy for being Luffy. Zoro can kind of respect the way the guy is always ready to _throw the fuck down,_ even if it’s over stupid shit. But the sickening smug looks Nami sends Zoro when he gets hostile, half-assed service while she gets fawned over are annoying as hell. This guy must be a real fucking idiot to buy Nami’s sweet-as-bullshit act.

 And the guy has no fucking respect for their dreams, so Zoro is pretty sure this guy won’t be on their crew. There’s no proof that this dickhead can actually fight either, like _really_ fight, so Zoro doesn’t give a fuck about him or his weakling’s opinion of their ambitions.

 “…Bunch of idiots,” the guy says. “You lot are the type to rush to your deaths, aren’t you?”

 Really, this shitty cook is just one more doubtful person in a long line of ‘em who doesn’t know any better. Zoro’s given his life over already. He’s only afraid of dying in the wrong way, without his swords in hand, which he’s sure as hell not risking happening again. Zoro is going to become the World’s Greatest Swordsman, because he’s a man of his damn word.

 “True,” Zoro answers, easily and immoveable. “But I’d rather you leave off the ‘idiot’ part.”

 The guy raises his stupid curly brows. “Oh?”

 “When I decided to become the World’s Greatest Swordsman, I threw away my attachment to life,” Zoro says. An impossible dream demands an impossible life, and Zoro was never going to settle down peacefully and live safely even before he made his promise. “The only one who has the right to call me an idiot is me alone.”

 Even if Luffy is naïve, he still has a pretty good idea of the monsters they’ll be going up against, and Usopp might be a coward, but even he understands what it means to try for a dream anyway. And even they don’t share Zoro’s ambition. This dickhead can fuck right off.

 The shitty cook actually has the gall to look _surprised_ that they all already _know_ that their goals are dangerous as hell. He’s somehow _surprised_ that they’ve all each already considered that they might die chasing their wild dreams. Honestly? Who’s the real idiot here? Who has the time to care about looking foolish? No one with dreams like theirs ever got there because they weren’t at least a bit of a fool.

 

~

 

  _“I know it’s a stupid dream, but-”_

_He wipes his hand across his sweaty forehead, scowling. “Don’t say it like that.”_

_“…What?”_

_“Don’t call your own dream stupid, stupid.”_

_Her face twists into a haughty frown. “Don’t you call me stupid!”_

_“Don’t call yourself stupid!” he snaps back._

_It’s insulting, actually, that all that cocky confidence is secretly fake as shit. She’s better than he is, they both know it every time their swords clash, whether it’s in the dojo or out on the training field or here in their new secret sparring spot. It’s just so outrageously insulting that she has the same dream and better skills and still calls the whole thing stupid, because she thinks being a girl is going to make her weaker than him someday._

_Zoro thinks that the only thing going to make her weak is acting weak like this, like there’s nothing she can do and like she’s just going to give up, and he fucking hates her for it. Sometimes, he hates Kuina more than he’s ever hated anyone, so it feels._

_“No wonder everyone’s telling you to just give up!” Zoro spits at her. “With you telling yourself to give up all the time! Who’s going to believe in anyone who calls their own dream stupid? You don’t even believe in yourself! You’re just hurting yourself! That’s stupid!”_

_She stares at him, wide-eyed, and he glares back._

_Then he scoffs and picks up his swords again. “You’re so scared of your own dream that you’ve got to call it stupid before you can even spit it out! You’re underestimating yourself! Who are you trying to talk out of it?”_

_“…I’m… I’m not trying to talk anyone out of anything!”_

_“You’re not going to talk yourself into it by calling your own dream stupid, stupid!” Zoro snarls. “Have some damn pride in yourself!”_

_Kuina frowns again, then shakes her head. She cocks her hip, crosses her arms, and lifts her chin in that familiar, frustrating, fake-as-shit way of hers. “Why should I?” she says mockingly. “You’ve got undeserved arrogance enough for the both of us!”_

_“Come take some, then!”_

~

 

 Speaking of fools and being played for some, Nami finally screws them over, just like Zoro knew she would. She picks a perfectly fucking awful time for it too. She does it just before the Don Krieg Pirates show up – an armada that looks like they just got chewed up and spat out of the ugliest of all hells, with a fucking monster following them. Johsaku stumbles on board to tell them that Nami made off with the Going Merry and all they damn money while they were distracted.

 Zoro can’t let his guard down long enough to have _one goddamn drink,_ it feels like sometimes. He should have known something was coming up soon with Nami acting nice recently! He should never have let himself actually kind of _like_ that sly and sneaky witch.

 Zoro forgets about Nami pretty quickly though.

 Who even gives a shit.

 Because he knows that monster following the Don Krieg Pirates, if only from hushed rumour and gruesome reports, he knows this monster capable of destroying an entire armada on a whim. This is the elusive man Zoro has been determinedly, demoniacally, desperately chasing after for years. This is the great swordsman, the _greatest_ swordsman, whose fly-by-night trail Johnny and Yosaku told him was rumoured to have passed near the Baratie, who has suddenly come to _Zoro_ instead, when Zoro thought he’d still be chasing after this man for the rest of his life.

 This is Dracule “Hawk-Eyes” Mihawk, the World’s Greatest Swordsman.

 There have been a few moments in Zoro’s life where he was suddenly struck by the thought that he _wanted_ something. He has raised himself to be a man of relatively few desires, by necessity, but the desires he does feel are fierce and all-consuming. It’s a hunger that’s hard for him to describe to others unless they’ve felt its claws for themselves – he doesn’t know how to explain wanting something _more than his life_ or wanting something _for the rest of his life._ Zoro has met so few people who have felt hunger like his own.

 The first time he saw what a real swordsman could do, that was one such starving moment.

 This moment is kind of like that one, actually. Zoro had been similarly breath-taken, as a boy, watching that nameless stranger’s blade cut through the air. Never had he felt so small. Never had he wanted anything so strongly, such that by comparison it felt like he had never truly wanted anything before.

 After that lightning-strike moment, when young Zoro picked up his own misbegotten sword, his attempt of mimicking that man was abysmal. He’d had no skill and no sense for the sword. Realization loomed, turning _“I want to do that”_ into _“I can’t do that”._ The difference between them was staggering to that young boy, though Zoro has no long since left that nameless swordsman far behind him in all ways. Determination turned _“I can’t do that”_ into _“I will do that”,_ and then painful dedication turned _“I will do that”_ into _“I can do that.”_

 The Don Krieg Pirates scream in fury, but the monstrous swordsman among them turns their attacks aside with almost laughable ease. The Don Krieg Pirates scream in fear, as the monstrous swordsman among them cuts them apart as though they have no more substance than air.

 The cooks of the Baratie are shouting too, at the sight of a demon waging war on a whim on their doorstep. Zoro’s little crew, especially Usopp and Johnny, are crying out in awe.

 Zoro stares, mesmerized, and commits this moment forever to his mind.

 When it feels like Hawk-Eyes is calling out for a challenge, among all the unworthy around him, Zoro steps up onto the Baratie railing, drawn by something far stronger than sense. He may never have another chance to test his blades against this elusive monster of a man. Yeah, Zoro might die, here and now, but it feels like he must speak up now or forever hold his breath… and waste away leaving his most precious promise unfulfilled. This fight is the only dance that matters anymore.

 Zoro threw away his attachment to life a long time ago.

 “I’ve never seen such graceful movements,” he says.

 This awed truth captures Hawk-Eyes’ attention. It sends a thrill down Zoro’s spine to have caught this man’s focus above all others here. Hawk-Eyes’ yellow gaze is even colder than they say.

 “A sword without grace is no strong sword,” Hawk-Eyes answers dismissively.

 But he has answered… and Zoro will not now nor ever let himself by dismissed by him. Zoro takes the first steps forward and does not ask. He demands loudly and clearly that this monstrous man fight him for his title and his life.

 He ignores any squawks or whoops from the Baratie behind him, because he’s not doing this for any of them. Zoro has long since set himself to this duel alone. Even Hawk-Eyes utter disdain for him as a challenge isn’t… well, no, it’s fucking annoying. Zoro never dreamed of this man being one more doubtful person in the long line of them, but he’ll make the man draw his damn sword for him if it’s the last thing he or Hawk-Eyes does.

 “If you’re a competent swordsman by any means, then I can demonstrate the clear difference in strength between you and me without needing to cross blades at all,” Hawk-Eyes says coolly, in answer to Zoro’s offense. “But still, you dare to challenge me. I wonder… does your bravery come from your conviction…? Or from ignorance…?”

 The man doesn’t sound like he actually gives a shit, but Zoro tells him anyway.

 “It comes from my ambition… and a promise to a friend.”

 

~

 

  _“Do you really think I can do it?”_

_Zoro turns immediately around to face his rival, who’s late for their evening training session for the first time in months. She looks all long face and heavy feet today. Something probably happened. When her quiet question finally registers, Zoro’s face scrunches up with even greater frustration._

_“What sort of stupid question is that?” he demands indignantly._

_Kuina wipes a hand across her eyes, which are all red and shiny, and lifts her chin. She glares at him, looking more demanding than hesitant, and that’s much better. She’s so damn strong and she keeps kicking his ass day after day, no matter how many times their swords meet, but she’s only getting worse with this shit. Why’s she got to keep coming up to him and showing him her weak spots? Why can’t they just keep getting stronger together? Why’s she got to keep poking at him to know what he thinks and wants?_

_“Do you think I can become the World’s Greatest Swordsman?” Kuina says._

_“I’m going to become the World’s Greatest Swordsman!” Zoro answers hotly._

_She’s never asked him this before. But it’s mean of her to keep doing this to him, he thinks, almost cruel. She knows his dream! She knows his dreams better than anyone else! Even as he does his damnedest every day to catch up to her skills and her strength, she’s always at least three steps ahead of him! It feels like he’ll be chasing her forever!_

_“Do you think I can become the World’s Greatest Swordsman?” she presses again._

_“Why do you care what I think?”_

_“Because you know my dreams better than anyone!” she snaps, and even stamps her foot. “Because you’re getting better faster than I am! Because you keep getting up no matter how many times I beat you into the ground! Because just…! Do you think I can do it or not?!”_

_Because Kuina thinks **he** can do it, Zoro realizes. _

_He gapes at her, mouth wide open, while she flushes bright red. A hungry thrill races through his arms, his heart, and his lungs at the incredible thought: she thinks he can do it. The feeling is such that he’s too small to contain it. The usually cocky rival he’s never once managed to beat thinks he’s strong enough to succeed at their foolish dream someday._

_He flushes red too and looks away first._

_“…I think you can do anything,” Zoro admits finally._

_Because he’s going to be the World’s Greatest Swordsman someday and she’s even better than him, and she’s only getting better too. Some days, it feels like he’d give anything just to be as strong as she is. It feels like he’ll be racing her to the title forever, chasing after her, swords clashing for the rest of their lives as they make something of themselves. It’s… it’s not a bad vision of the future, really._

_Zoro glances at his fiercest rival again, who looks the colour of a tomato now._

_“But I’m still going to beat you!” he tells her._

 

~

 

Zoro isn’t afraid of fighting Dracule Mihawk, though the thrill down his spine at his challenge being _accepted_ is a feeling others might mistake for it. Every single part of him – arms, heart, and lungs most of all – is straining towards this fight. Zoro has been heading towards this exact moment for his whole damn life, it feels like his feet have always been trying to take him _here._

 The only thing Zoro is afraid of is a shameful, dishonourable death.

 Fighting Hawk-Eyes is, like, the exact opposite of that.

 But… Zoro can hear the exclamations of the cooks and his new crew behind him – Usopp and Luffy and Johsaku – and he’d be lying if he said that he wasn’t… a little bit concerned about them. Not for their lives, of course, because either Zoro will win and it won’t be a problem or he’ll be dead before that becomes his problem. No, Zoro is suddenly reminded and concerned about Luffy potentially offering to fuse with him, to get a piece of this action, as he has for almost all of Zoro’s fights.

 Zoro knows now that Luffy won’t force the issue or interfere in the fight. But holy _shit,_ if Luffy even makes the damn offer in front of Dracule fucking “Hawk-Eyes” _fucking Mihawk,_ Zoro might die a shameful, dishonourable death on the fucking spot. Luffy better not make him look that damn weak in front of the World’s Greatest Swordsman.

 But Luffy doesn’t.

 “Ahhhhhhhhh, Luffy!” Usopp is shrieking, back on the Baratie. “Zoro is going to fight a super strong, hawk-eyed monster! DIDN’T YOU SEE WHAT HE DID, LUFFY?! Zoro’s going to diiie, Luffy! You two should fuse to take that super strong guy on!”

 Usopp does, though. Thanks a fucking bunch, Usopp.

 Zoro will punch that long-nose later, if he makes it through this fight with arms to punch with.

 But Luffy just bursts out laughing, like Usopp just said the funniest fucking thing imaginable. Really, like Usopp has made his best joke yet and ever. Zoro isn’t looking back – not with Dracule “Hawk-Eyes” Mihawk finally in front of him – but he can practically feel Usopp and Johsaku and the Baratie cooks and the Don Krieg Pirates all staring disbelievingly at Luffy.

 “Shishishi! Fuse?! For the first time? For a sword fight this important, Usopp? No way! Fighting Hawky is something that Zoro’s doing aaall by himself! HEY!” Luffy shouts eagerly. “HEY, ZORO! ZORO! KICK HIS FUCKING ASS, ZORO!”

 Hawk-Eyes looks over at Luffy at this, raising one eyebrow, and Zoro thinks he sees a flash of consideration for his captain, through that cold boredom, before the World’s Greatest Swordsman looks towards the lone opponent approaching again. And there’s a new flash of consideration in Dracule Mihawk’s gaze for Zoro too.

 The man isn’t moving, but when Zoro meets those eerie, cold yellow eyes again… something about Dracule Mihawk seems to become even sharper… even more dangerous… even more monstrous.

 Zoro grins wider at this, as he answers, “Aye, aye, captain.”

 Fucking damn, he’s been starving for this.

 “To be honest,” Zoro admits to the man standing between him and his golden dream, as he draws his three swords, feeling the weight of them and his promise, feeling as ready as he’ll ever be against a beast like this. “I never thought I’d be able to meet you so early on.”

 “A waste, if you ask me,” Hawk-Eyes answers.

 

~

 

  _“You shouldn’t care what I think anyway,” Zoro says._

_It had been a while since his rival had asked him to judge the extent of her abilities, if he thought she could achieve their dream, long enough that anyone who had not been churning the question over and over in their mind should have forgotten the moment entirely. But his rival, after she wipes the blood from her split lip, broken open during their latest of almost countless spars, looks at him without confusion._

_“Why not?” Kuina says simply._

_Because they want the same thing. They both want to be the World’s Greatest Swordsman and only one of them will be able to take the title, no matter if they push and pull and lift each other forward through the entire race there. At this rate, it’s not going to be fair whichever one of them succeeds, because they won’t have done it without the other._

_“Because we’re rivals!” Zoro answers hotly. “I might say anything to get you to give up!”_

_“…Yeah, sure,” she answers, clearly amused._

_“I might!” he insists. “Besides, it’s your dream, right? You can’t keep listening to what stupid other people think of your dream! They don’t know what they’re talking about! They don’t have anything to do with it! You shouldn’t care whether I think you can do it or not!”_

_Kuina smiles at him, wide and bright and still unfairly amused. Zoro sticks to his statement and lifts his chin, determined not to care what she thought of anything this time._

_“I know,” she says. “I don’t care what other people think anymore.”_

_Zoro nodded approvingly._

_“But I still care what you think.”_

_Zoro nearly drops his swords in surprise, and his rival’s grin only gets wider. Like, after all this time spent together, she knows that he’s just putting up a strong front. Like she knows that her personal disapproval would probably crack his weak heart into thousands upon thousands of sharp pieces._

_“After all, a good rival wants a real challenge, right? I want my dream to be worth something! And it’s not really just my dream anymore, is it?” Kuina says smugly. “It’s your dream too. We’re going to be some of the World’s Greatest Swordsmen someday, first and second place, no matter who ends up at the top. It’s **our** dream.” _

_Zoro is speechless, but not for long. “I’m going to be first place,” he says reflexively._

_Kuina laughs. “Yeah? You’ll have to fight me for it!”_

_Zoro grins back, because he knows a challenge from his rival when he hears one, and he’s been starving for another spar. It’s only been a day since their last fight, but that still feels too long. It feels like they’ve been apart for ages. When their swords are dancing, they don’t need any stupid words or have any stupid worries. Everything falls into place as easy as breathing._

_Only one can stand at the top someday, but they’ll get there together all the same._

 

~

 

 Hawk-Eyes might as well have taken out a _butter knife_ with which to fight him and it’s outrageously fucking insulting. Yet in the face of Zoro’s offense, Dracule Mihawk just raises his eyebrows like humouring Zoro’s challenge is somehow equally humiliating for him. Like Zoro’s dream is just as great a personal insult.

 “Unfortunately, I do not have a blade smaller than this at the moment,” he says.

 Zoro feels like he could snarl and he does.

 “There’s a LIMIT,” he shouts at Hawk-Eyes, as he prepares to begin with this last dance, against one more non-believer standing between him and everything that ever really mattered, “to just how much you can underestimate me! _You better not regret it when you die!”_

 But the man remains unmoved, even as he looms.

 “Hear me, little frog in his well,” Hawk-Eyes says. “It is time for you to realize that the world is bigger than what it seems from your still waters.” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More general character study than pure fusion AU for this chapter. A lot of the dialogue here (everything unrelated to fusion) is taken directly from canon, because I really do love the Baratie arc and it's got some great lines. I love the Zoro & Mihawk fight and relationship.


	4. Post-Baratie

 Zoro wakes up and everything _hurts._

 Faces are swimming in and out of the dark. He sees Usopp and Johnny’s worried expressions, mouths moving, shouting and squawking and generally making a shit ton of noise. What happened? What happened to Luffy? What happened to Johsaku? What happened to Mihawk?

 But Zoro can’t form any questions, can’t even tell if he’s moving his own damn mouth. Which is just fucking fine, because he can’t hear any actual words from them, just all that damn noise. Fucking hell, is it really too much to ask that these shrieking weaklings give him some damn quiet so he can see better? He can’t even move, everything’s on fire, it feels like someone’s cut his chest open.

 Oh, right, someone did.

  _Fuck._

 Zoro tries to push himself up, to ask what happened to Mihawk, and to Luffy and Yosaku and Johsaku, but Usopp and Johnny’s noise gets immediately closer. So does the _pain._ Hands push him and his struggles back down effortlessly.

 Almost just like how Zoro was so slowly and so easily pressed down in that fateful duel.

 Damn it, Zoro can almost see those piercing yellow eyes swimming before him again, staring into his damn soul with cold interest. He can still feel the monstrous Dracule Mihawk holding all his strength back like it was all for nothing. Zoro span, cut, slashed, and pushed, but everything he was and had ever been wasn’t enough in the only dance that mattered. He still didn’t give up, of course, but that didn’t make a difference.

 He can still hear Mihawk’s words ringing through his head, as the unmoved man unmade him.

  _“What do you still desire at the extent of your strength, weakling?”_

  Beyond the blackening pain, perhaps _because_ of the immense pain, Zoro feels undone now. Not broken, but… like Mihawk cut him apart completely. The man didn’t even need his damn sword to do it, though Zoro was generously permitted to taste the true clash of their blades by the end… to know the true difference between their skill and strength, and how little a precious dream meant to a non-believer. Zoro tried to be twice the swordsman anyone and everyone else was, he staked his whole damn identity on that duel, and he still wasn’t enough to scratch that monster’s grace.

 Fucking hell, it’s like Mihawk figurately reached into him, picked out his dreaming heart, dangled the weak thing mockingly in front of Zoro’s own eyes, and then _swallowed_ it, before belatedly and literally slicing Zoro’s damn chest open for good measure.

 Even fucking fusion couldn’t have laid Zoro so miserably bare and weak.

 

 ~

 

  _“It is much too early for you to die!”_

 

~

 

 Zoro wakes up and everything hurts.

 He doesn’t know where he is, the black spots give way to an unforgivably blue sky, and he can hear the slap and creak and splash of a ship in sail. His throat is so damn dry, with the echo of something important trapped and ringing behind his teeth. Zoro groans and tries to sit up, which just doesn’t fucking work and only makes everything hurt even more.

 Footsteps and suddenly Usopp and Johnny are there, hands on his shoulders again or hovering over his chest. Good, these two cowards can tell him what happened to everyone else. Where did that hawk-eyed monster go? After he’d unmade Zoro and left him alone, bleeding into the sea, to build himself back up again into something worthy of a fight?

The three of them (Usopp, Johnny, and Zoro) are on a small ship, apparently, sailing away from the Baratie restaurant, which is still under attack by the Don Krieg Pirates, but still being protected by Luffy and Yosaku and those weird, bad-ass Baratie cooks. Luffy and Yosaku and whatever poor bastard Luffy drags along as their cook will catch up with them later somewhere. At least, that’s what Zoro _thinks_ Usopp and Johnny are blabbering on about through all their fucking crying and trembling attempts at keeping him alive.

 Dracule Mihawk apparently wasn’t a problem, because the Don Krieg Pirates and Baratie had lost his cold attention. He left as soon as he’d cut his mark into Zoro’s chest.

  _His successor. He swore it. He swore it to **me,**_ Zoro thinks blearily. _Did you hear that, Kuina?_

 

 ~

 

  _“Know thy self! Know thy world! And become strong, Roronoa!”_

 

 ~

 

 Zoro wakes up and everything still fucking hurts.

 He keeps coming in and out of consciousness, staring up at that sky and listening to the sea turn around him, on the way to wherever they’re going. Usopp keeps telling him something about fish but Zoro keeps forgetting. It’s hard to rest in peace between the shitty first-aid and the shitty sailing of their shit boat, not to mention the hellish fucking _pain._

 “GAH, ZORO, DON’T MOVE! YOU’LL START BLEEDING AGAIN-!”

 “Brother Zoro, you’re gonna die like that-!”

 Zoro’s too damn weak to push back against the hands pressing him down to the deck. He’s too damn weak to do anything important apparently. He’s not strong enough for himself, much less anyone else. He remembers losing his fight, clear as a nightmare, but little else.

 God, somehow, he never even thought about the possibility of losing. He knew he might die going into that fight, which never mattered because that duel was the last dance that mattered, but somehow it never occurred to him that dying also meant _losing._ He never seriously considered failing his promise a possible result. Everything to do with his dream was so foolish and necessary that he just didn’t fucking think about how that worked.

 “Where’s Luffy?” Zoro grunts.

 Zoro’s made another promise now, to Luffy, to never lose again. He remembers _that,_ the echoes still humming in his throat. He made a promise to his smiling captain, to the only other one who _gets_ his hunger and will help him shove his way into the World’s Strongest no matter what it takes, and he means it because he’s a man of his damn word and he can’t lose again.

  _Fuck, I nearly failed. I’m not ready yet. I nearly died there. I can’t die like that._

 “Luffy’s back at the Baratie still! He’s fighting with that cook-!”

 “Oh, right,” Zoro says, and passes out again.

 

~

 

  _“No matter how many months or years pass by, I shall stand here at the top of the world and wait for you!”_

 

~

 

 The first thing that Zoro does when he wakes up properly, like, for real, is punch Usopp in the face. Not hard, because Usopp’s pretty weak and Zoro’s not super mad and this fucking wound is heavy shit, but enough to set Usopp back on his ass and set Johnny screaming about aggravating his chest. Because, y’know, he said he would and Zoro is still a man of his damn word.

 “What the heck was that for?!” Usopp demands, rubbing his long nose.

 “Brother Zoro, not again! Hawk-Eyes nearly killed you!”

 Zoro bares his teeth at Usopp, grinning threateningly and against the incredible fucking pain, and lets Johnny press him down again. “That’s for telling me and Luffy to fuse in front of fucking Mihawk, you long-nose coward!”

 “Because that guy was scary strong!” Usopp wails.

 “ _You_ nearly killed me with that yelling about fusion! Don’t do it again.”

 “HE CUT YOU IN HALF!”

 Zoro grunts disapprovingly. “Only a little bit.”

 The World’s Greatest Swordsman was very precise – amazingly, admirably, enviably precise. If Dracule Mihawk wanted Zoro cut in half, he would have done that. Instead, he’d cut him open across the chest, which is probably going to turn into a bitch of a scar. Instead of killing Zoro for daring to challenge him, Mihawk left his mark on an unmade Zoro forever.

 Zoro hadn’t proven himself worthy, but… he’d proven himself worthy of becoming worthy.

 Mihawk thought he could do it.

 “THERE’S NO ‘ONLY A LITTLE BIT’ GETTING CUT IN HALF-! AND… alright, you weren’t actually cut in _half,_ I guess,” Usopp admits.

 Zoro grunts again, because he’s always right like that.

 “BUT HE REALLY CUT YOU! A LOT! SUPER BAD! THERE WAS SO MUCH BLOOD EVERYWHERE!” Usopp insists fearfully. “But you and Luffy are both super strong! Your fusion would have been super, super strong! If you two fused to fight that guy, we might’ve won!”

 Yeah, no, Zoro’s not sitting back and taking that shit.

 He lunges up and grabs Usopp by the front of his shirt, massive wound be damned, setting Usopp and Johnny shrieking in fear and concern again. (If they keep this shit up, they’ll have to worry about his fucking ears bleeding.) Zoro yanks Usopp close until their sniper’s long nose is pressed against his own and stares right into his eyes.

 He’s only going to explain this once.

 “Fusions that can take on the World’s Strongest take fucking _work,_ dumbass, and even then _I’m_ going to become the World’s Greatest Swordsman, you hear?” Zoro snarls. “Not Luffy. Not you. Not _anyone_ else, especially not some unbalanced, imperfect _fusion._ There’s no fucking _we_ in this for you and me. I’m going to beat Mihawk by myself because there’s no fucking point otherwise. The day I fuse to fight _him_ is the day that hell freezes over and I throw myself on Wadou Ichimonji. Got it?!”

 “Got it!” Usopp squeaks.

 “Great,” Zoro tells him, then lets go of his shirt and passes the fuck out again.

 

~

 

_“So forge on ahead with that fierce conviction and try to surpass my sword!” Dracule Mihawk called out, his voice carrying loud and clear across the waves. “SURPASS ME, RORONOA!”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to do an interlude to bridge the arcs. I didn't want to entirely skip over Zoro's reaction to the fight of his life (especially since I felt that recapping every detail of the Zoro & Mihawk fight, as much as I love it, was unnecessary), but I didn't want to lump it in with the Arlong Park arc. This felt very self-contained as it was.
> 
> Mihawk's lines are, again, taken from canon for this chapter.


	5. Arlong Park

 Zoro is not having a good fucking day.

 He decides this pretty quickly, the next time he wakes up, and it only gets worse from there. They’ve arrived at a new island, him and Usopp and Johnny, at a place called Arlong Park, chasing Nami and the Going Merry and their goddamn money. But Usopp and Johnny won’t just let him kick down the front gates of Arlong Park and kick some fishman pirate ass. _Nooo,_ Usopp and Johnny are worried that Zoro will keel over just trying to take a few steps, like he’s that weak, so they _tied him down_ to stop him.

 Then a local fishman spots their ship and comes to investigate, and Usopp and Johnny don’t just _fight him_. No, they abandon the damn ship in a panic, which Zoro would never do but also can’t fucking do because they _tied him up._ So, the fishman clambers on board and finds Zoro, and decides to take him to his boss, and Zoro can’t do shit about it because Usopp and Johnny fucking _gift-wrapped_ him for this ugly son-of-a-fish.

 Usopp and Johnny are dead men walking, as far as Zoro’s concerned. This is all their fault and Zoro is going to punch them at least three times for this later. First, for not just letting him fucking fight the fish pirates. Second, for _tying him up._ Third, for abandoning him and letting him get captured.

 Three is a good fucking number and Zoro likes to do most everything in threes if he can.

 God, he wouldn’t even have fucking cared if Usopp and Johnny fused to fight that fishman themselves, in comparison to this bullshit. They’re such cowardly weaklings, Zoro has no damn idea why he’s even remotely fond of either of them.

 For all that Mihawk cut Zoro’s dreams and dignity apart, at least Zoro will always have the fact that he’s not a fucking coward.

 

~

 

 Arlong the Saw, Captain of the Arlong Pirates, turns out to be one of those big, smug, scummy motherfuckers who gets even uglier the longer he talks. He even has a tacky-ass throne to act like the king of this little island and everything. If Zoro wasn’t in incredible goddamn pain and tied up (god, he doesn’t even have a fucking shirt), he’d beat Arlong into the ground just for the sake of it, although he wouldn’t say no to that nice bounty this other East Blue demon thinks he’s come for.

 He doesn’t pay much attention to Arlong’s grand-standing though.

 Who even gives a shit.

 Because _Nami_ is here, among these fishmen, a member of the Arlong Pirates. Zoro asks her if this is her true self and she confirms it, looming over him smug from ear to ear, announcing that she is an _officer_ of the Arlong Pirates and already was one when they met.

 This _lying witch!_ Zoro wants to cut that sick satisfaction off her goddamn face.

 Arlong bursts out laughing behind her. “Shahahaha! She had you completely strung along! This girl right here would do anything for the sake of money. Even forget the death of her own parent! She’s a real cold-blooded witch!”

 With all the gloating fishmen behind her, gathered around Arlong’s tacky-ass throne, none of them can see Nami’s face. They all missed the fearful flinch that struck the sick satisfaction off her face when Arlong laughed… or the wide-eyed and stricken look when he spewed his trash. Even when Nami gets it under control again, even when she tries to turn that fake-ass smugness on Zoro again, her eyes are still too sharp and too quick for something not to be up.

 Hmm. Zoro’s known a lot of guys with that look.

 “Tricking people to swindle them is like her second nature!” Arlong yells delightedly.

 Yeah, Zoro’s not going to argue that bit, he’s been watching Nami since they grouped up with her and he’s seen a lot of that. But no one can spend long stretches of time together without showing some of their softer spots, and Nami didn’t hide hers all that well. Come to think of it, there’s a lot this lying witch did that she didn’t need to do just to screw them over later.

 If swindling is Nami’s second nature, then what’s her first nature? What’s her third nature, when first and second aren’t enough? She’s not a very instincts person anyway, in Zoro’s opinion.

 Nami had actual _pity_ for the villagers of Orange Town, more than Zoro or Luffy did, even though she robbed them. Luffy fought because Buggy attacked him first and because he befriended that weird dog and the old man, and Zoro fought to save his dumbass captain, to prove himself, and because he just fucking likes it.

 Nami seemed to find the Black Cats’ plan almost as despicable and horrifying as Usopp. She worried over Kaya and the little kids of Usopp’s “crew”. She hates fighting, but she came to help Usopp anyway, even in the face of “overwhelming odds” or whatever. And afterwards? Zoro remembers Nami frequently curled up on a seat with Usopp’s Kaya, while they waited for their new ship to be ready, the two women grinning and giggling together over something or rather, like fast and gentle friends. For a heartless thief looking to swindle everyone she meets, Nami didn’t touch a damn thing in Usopp’s Kaya’s mansion. Kaya and Nami kissed cheeks in farewell before the Merry sailed away.

 Zoro remembers her genuine laughter, at Luffy and Usopp’s antics, despite her relatable exasperation. He remembers her sly comments, over drinks in Usopp’s village and at the Baratie, made for no other apparent reason than making Zoro snort booze out his nose. She was the one who explained basic sea travel. She was the only one who seemed to get how mind-bogglingly wild it was that Usolu happened.

 “Moreover, she’s got us as her backup!” Arlong laughs.

  _She sure damn did,_ Zoro thinks, remembering Luffy grinning smugly when he’d jokingly tied his own limbs into the knot he was being shown and Nami giggling so hard she couldn’t breathe, even though she insisted it wasn’t that funny. _So why the fuck did she go back to you?_

 “I see,” he says. “Well… it’s not like I really trusted her anyways. Wouldn’t surprise me even if she turned out to be a devilish cutthroat.” He looks Nami in the eye, baring his throat for her to give it her best go, and laughs. “Right from the very beginning, I had a feeling that you were a good-for-nothing woman.”

 There’s a faint furrow to Nami’s brow, but it’s mostly hidden by her sneer. “Hmph! Well, then, that makes things easier. If you’ve realized that I was only tricking you, then can you just give up on your treasure and my navigation skills and disappear already? You’re an eyesore!”

 That’s some fake-ass cockiness right there. Zoro knew a girl with that look.

 Nami really thinks she can pretend to be a cold-blooded killer after everything? She’s no cold-blooded killer, if only because Zoro knows his fellows when he fucking sees them. He didn’t buy her sweet-as-bullshit act, he’s not going to buy this cruel-as-crap act either.

 This _might_ play a part in Zoro intentionally, stubbornly, spitefully throwing himself backwards into the Arlong Park pool. It’s hardly the stupidest thing he’s done to prove a fucking point, but… it’s up there, probably. Anyway, Nami dives in after him and drags him out of the water, just like he bet she and her soft heart would, because he’s always right like that. There are some things Zoro won’t do: like cheat with fusion in a duel against Dracule fucking Mihawk, but otherwise, in his book, it’s not stupid if it fucking works. And this? This _fucking works._

 The fishmen around them are murmuring in confusion, as Nami and Zoro drip and wheeze on the ground in front of them.

 True self, huh? What crap.

 “Hey,” Nami hisses, “what the big idea?”

 When Zoro grins, he can still feel his promise to Luffy ringing behind his teeth, ringing down through his lungs, heart, and arms too. If Zoro’s accepted that he’s following a fool like Monkey D. Luffy to the top, then he’s dragging this sneaky witch into the mess and madness with him.

 It’s the least he can do.

 “I should ask you the same thing. A small-time crook like you who can’t even let one person die shouldn’t be actin’ all tough!” Zoro answers, then coughs up water and grunts. “And be quicker next time, slowpoke. Almost thought I was a goner.”

 Nami kicks him, then beats him up a bit in front of Arlong and his crew. Even hit sends agony rippling through Zoro’s chest, but he’s had worse, probably. Nami’s not that tough, for all she kicks like she’s trying to fucking mean it. Zoro doesn’t bother to listen to her threats or warnings, and instead focuses on exactly which chortling chums of the Arlong Pirates he’s going to beat up first and how. If he wasn’t tied-up and without-his-swords and recently-almost-cut-in-half, he’d be serving himself some damn sushi right now.

 When Nami’s done, the fishmen drag him off to a dungeon.

 Yeah, today fucking sucks.

 

~

 

 Zoro is in the process of thinking about rescue when it comes to him.

 His thoughts go as follows: this is all Usopp and Johnny’s fault. He was injured by a fucking warlord and his own crew tied him up, so it’s not his fault that he got captured. He’ll get out of this mess on his own, he always does, but if Luffy comes to help him out before he can get himself free, then at least Zoro got captured by a fearsome pirate with a decent bounty. Luffy got his ass kidnapped by a _bird_ and then a clown, so Zoro’s captain has no damn room to talk shit.

 And then rescue comes to him, in the unlikely form of a scowling Nami. Zoro stays silent as she opens his cell and cuts his ropes, smug in that he fucking knew it. Cold-hearted, his ass. If Nami wants him to believe she’s a cold-blooded killer, she really sucks at it.

 Nami tells him to fuck off and never come back, if he knows what’s good for him.

  _Do I look like a guy who gives a shit about what other people think is good for him?_ Zoro doesn’t ask her. He generously considers the fact that Nami didn’t stick around long enough to watch him get his ass handed to him by Mihawk, but he still thinks she ought to know how ridiculous that sounds just saying it. Zoro’s got his own definitions of good, thanks.

 Instead, he lingers in the doorway of his cell, basking in Nami’s disbelieving frustration as she keeps a lookout for the Arlong Pirates.

 “Hey,” he says. “Let’s fuse to fight these guys.”

 Nami freezes, then looks at him incredulously. All that fake-ass sneering just drops right off and Zoro grins at her in his own satisfaction. Nami’s scowl drops back down soon enough.

 “You don’t mean that,” she accuses.

 “Fuck, no,” Zoro agrees.

 He doesn’t trust Nami like that and doesn’t need her to fight anyone, and he doesn’t fucking want to fuse with anyone anyway. He wouldn’t fuse with her if limb or life depended on it.

 “But you know that’s the first damn thing that Luffy’s going to say when he bounces through those gates looking for you,” Zoro tells her. “And he’ll mean it.”

 “He’s an idiot,” Nami answers derisively.

 “…Yeah, he is,” Zoro says, with surprising fondness, “but he’s our idiot captain.”

 “Not mine.”

 “You keep telling yourself that.”

 “…Just _fuck off_ already before you get yourself killed,” Nami snarls. “And tell that stupid rubber idiot to fuck off too. I’m not a part of his crew and I never was. I don’t need or want him, _or_ his weird fusions. Or _yours._ ”

 “Tell him yourself and see how well that goes,” Zoro says, but ambles off anyway.

 

~

 

 He doesn’t actually leave Arlong Park.

 Firstly, he doesn’t actually know where the fuck he is. (What fucking island is this, even? Did Usopp say? Fuck, Zoro can’t remember.) Secondly, he doesn’t actually have anywhere to fucking go, since he doesn’t know where Usopp and Johnny scuttled off to like cowardly weaklings. Thirdly, he has some fishmen he needs to beat the crap out of for capturing him and then laughing while the witch beat him up. What sort of scum enjoys a woman fighting a man who can’t fight back?

 He told Luffy he’d bring Nami back, he thinks, or there’s the expectation he will, so that’s happening come hell or high water, even if bringing Nami back means going through the Arlong Pirates. So, wound from a warlord be damned, Zoro goes through the Arlong Pirates.

 Unfortunately, Nami isn’t the only one to have left Arlong Park on who-fucking-cares business, so have Arlong and his other officers. Anyone honestly worth fighting has fucked off. Arlong’s chum slumped around him, Zoro kicks back on Arlong’s tacky-ass throne to wait for the scummy motherfucker, resting the wounds these fishman pirates made him aggravate to kick their asses, because Arlong’s got to come back here eventually. It’s _called_ Arlong Park, after all.

 Well, actually, no. It’s called _Zoro_ Park now, because Zoro’s going to call it that until Arlong comes back to fight him for his house again. Arlong can haul ass to him. Zoro is just going to chill here on his new tacky-ass seat and in his new fish-stinking shirt.

 With nothing better to do, Zoro’s thoughts wander back to Nami. This whole thing would be so much easier if Nami wasn’t such a lying witch. At least Usopp is _open_ about being a cowardly, soft-hearted weakling. And Luffy’s too damn simple to bother with lies.

 Zoro usually doesn’t let himself contemplate fusions, really, because fusions are fucking stupid. He doesn’t like them and he's got more than a couple reasons not to like them. Well, he’s thought about fusion with Luffy, because Luffy doesn’t really give people a choice about not thinking about jumping into foolish things like fusion with him, what with him asking about fusion every other damn fight or so. But other than that, before Luffy happened, Zoro didn’t let himself even think of something so never-gonna-fucking-happen as fusing with another person.

 But he tries to imagine what fusion with Nami would be like anyway. He’d never ever fuse with a girl like her and he just said it as a joke, anyway, to get under her skin, but still, now that he’s said it, he’s thinking about it. What would that even be _like?_

 Nami doesn’t even like fighting and fighting is basically Zoro’s everything. He’s never even seen her _hold_ a sword. Nami is about as trustworthy as a devil and Zoro is nothing if not a man of his damn word. Nami is also a coward, comparatively, and Zoro is anything but that. They don’t have any common goals right now, much less any common dreams, so they’d probably break apart as soon as they tried to twirl together. Zoro can’t even imagine taking those first steps.

  _Fusing really would be fucking stupid,_ Zoro thinks wisely.

 

~

 

 Zoro has to leave Zoro Park, because it turns out Arlong and his officers left to chase Usopp and possibly also Johnny, and Zoro decides they probably need saving. He catches a ride to some village from an octopus named Hachi – nice enough guy, if a bit slow, who doesn’t need to know that Zoro is Roronoa Zoro the Pirate Hunter who just wrecked half his crew – and goes hunting for the cowardly weaklings he still needs to feed knuckle-sandwiches.

Because today sucks, Zoro ends up stomping around the island’s stupid fucking jungle, grumbling about twisting paths, a cruel lack of decent directional signs, and Usopp apparently being enough of a dumbass to get caught by Arlong. And, because today is just godawful, he nearly dies when a boat _falls out of the fucking sky_ right on top of him.

 It’s a surprise until Zoro realizes that his damn captain is on the boat and probably somehow responsible. Zoro doesn’t know whether to be pissed that Luffy nearly took his head off or relieved that Luffy is finally here to make everything simple again. Zoro decides to be pissed off, when Luffy leaps on him in greeting, because that fucking _hurts,_ even if he kind of missed that wide, foolish grin and the relentless damn bouncing and his captain’s appreciation for a good fucking fight.

 Yosaku falls out of the boat after Luffy, retching of course, and then a third person steps out smooth as butter: that shitty cook from the Baratie. The fierce one who called them all idiots and told Zoro to throw away his ambition. Zoro’s eyes narrow on the guy, who straightens his fancy suit and fixes his fancy hair, and then glares back at Zoro while fishing a cigarette out of his pocket.

 So, Luffy got this asshole for his crew after all. Hmm.

 “Where’s everyone else?” Luffy demands.

 Zoro decides to size the shitty cook up properly later (clearly someone has to make sure Luffy isn’t picking people who’ll fuck them over later) and fills his captain in on all the bullshit that’s been happening: Nami’s in some shit with the Arlong Pirates and she’s being damn weird about it, Usopp got himself captured by Arlong, and Zoro has no fucking clue where Johnny is.

 And then Johnny shows up and tells them Nami killed Usopp.

 And Zoro is soon forced to give a shit about the shitty cook when the guy stops him from shaking the truth out of Nami, when she comes to them with a long face and heavy feet and a heavily bandaged hand, and tells them that she sent Usopp to the bottom of the ocean. The dickhead tries to _kick Zoro in the head!_ Fuck! What happened to that soft-skinned, soft-hearted cook Zoro thought they’d end up with? The guy tries to reprimand him for having enough of Nami’s bullshit!

 “Does a swordsman hurt ladies as well, Roronoa Zoro?”

 “The _hell_ did you say? Don’t butt in when you don’t know the first thing about anything!”

 Firstly, Nami here isn’t a fucking lady. There are some weak people out there who need protecting, like Usopp’s little crew or Usopp’s Kaya or _Usopp,_ but Nami isn’t one of them. Secondly, Nami especially doesn’t need protecting when she’s on this fucking bullshit. Nami’s counts of lying and backstabbing are racking up here and what sort of warrior takes that lying down? Thirdly, Kuina might just come back from the dead and _beat Zoro’s ass into the ground_ if she thought for a _fucking second_ he wasn’t treating women exactly the same way he treats everyone else.

 And then the shitty cook insults Zoro’s duel with Mihawk, mockingly calls it a shameless loss, like he wasn’t even watching it! Didn’t he see what happened? Sure, it was absolutely _humiliating,_ but Zoro was still acknowledged by a _warlord_. Mihawk fought him in the first place and marked him his successor by the end of it! The World’s Greatest Swordsman is _waiting_ for him.

 Fuck later, Zoro’s sized this guy up already and he fucking hates him. What an asshole.

 He hopes Luffy didn’t offer to fuse with him.

 God, who is he fucking kidding, of course Luffy offered. There's no way he didn't, the tasteless idiot.

 

~

 

 Between Usopp (who isn’t dead, even if he comes close to it when the shitty cook accidentally kicks him in the face, which prompts Zoro to generously decide to give up on the new punches he owes Usopp) and a woman named Nojiko, who’s apparently Nami’s elder sister, the story behind Nami’s bullshit comes tumbling out. Zoro kicks back underneath a tree to nap and does his best not to listen, even though (and maybe a bit because) the supposed disrespect pisses off the shitty cook, because Zoro doesn’t give a shit about what other people think about why Nami did what.

 He can’t help but hear some of the sob story anyway, though.

 It’s not that unusual a story. Nami had an alright childhood, with her adoptive mother, an ex-Marine named Bellemere, and adoptive sister Nojiko, until the Arlong Pirates came to her town and decided they owned it. Arlong demanded the villagers' money or their lives, a set tax for every person’s life, and Nami’s family was poor as shit. Luffy’s idea of piracy is more like complete freedom and Zoro doesn’t give a shit what the Marines call him while he pursues his dream, but that’s how it goes with most people who call themselves pirates.

 Nami and Nojiko tried to _fuse_ to keep the price down, but even though their fusion was perfect, one less child didn’t cut the price down enough to save their adoptive mother. Arlong caught their fusion and laughingly told them they were lucky he wasn’t taxing them for Namiko too.

 Then Nami made an agreement with Arlong to buy back her village permanently or something, a goal she’s so very close to achieving, but Zoro can’t help but think it’s stupid. He’s known countless guys with Arlong’s look. Those fishmen aren’t men of their damn word and Nami, sly and cynical as she is, ought to know that. The Arlong Pirates know where Nami’s weak spots are now and Zoro doesn’t know many scum who’ll give up a golden goose; motherfuckers like Arlong are more likely to kill the bird and eat it rather than let anyone else have it.

 He supposes he can muster some respect for Nami’s efforts to fight for her little village the only way she knew how, but sneaking and thieving still aren’t impressive in his book. Also, as a dedicated wanderer, he can barely understand the idea of having a home worth all that trouble.

  _Well…_ Zoro cracks an eye open to look over the woman Nami once fused with… _emphasis on barely._

 

~

 

 Arlong screws Nami over, because _of course_ he does. Scum like him only shout so knowingly about other people the way they do when they’re really talking about themselves. But it’s almost a relief that he does, even though it’s real fucking disconcerting to see someone a witch like Nami crying and on her knees, because then Nami _finally_ stops pretending that she can do all this on her own. She drops the cowardly bullshit at long last and turns to them for her backup.

 “Luffy… help me…” she says.

 And Luffy grins at her, wide and confident and as wise as a fool.

 “Of course I will!” he cries, and drops his precious straw-hat on her head for safe-keeping.

 Nami touches the brim, stunned as the rest of them.

 “I’m going to go kick Arlong’s ass!” Luffy informs her. “Wanna fuse so we can do it together?”

 Some of the villagers gathered around them gasp, at such an intimate and absurd offer. Nami’s sister’s eyes practically bug out and the old guy with the windmill on his hat, who might be their dad or something, chokes on nothing. Usopp groans softly, because this is kind of fucking embarrassing, and the shitty cook just shakes his head while lighting another cigarette.

 Zoro grins, because he’s always right like this.

 “I-Idiot!” Nami laughs, trembling. “I still don’t l-like fighting!”

 Luffy makes a face, briefly, like she’s the weird one, but remains as unoffended as ever.

 “That’s okay! Come on, guys, let’s go find Arlong!”

 “Aye, aye, captain!” Usopp cries, even though his knees are knocking at the very idea.

 “Finally,” the shitty cook says.

 Luffy begins listing off all the ways he’s going to kick Arlong’s ass to Usopp, but Zoro lingers instead, and smirks knowingly at Nami, still picking herself off the ground and wiping at her eyes. She scowls at him like it’s somehow his fault she didn’t come around to Luffy’s madness sooner.

 “Shut the fuck up, Zoro,” Nami says, and hiccups. “I’m still not fusing with you either.”

 The shitty cook makes a noise like he was just punched in the gut, Usopp yells in confusion at the very idea of a Zoro-Nami fusion and promptly trips over nothing, and Luffy is already bounding ahead towards Zoro Park to punch a fucking fishman in the face. Zoro throws back his head and laughs at Nami’s joke, while she grins at him all teeth and snot. It really is such a bad damn joke, but somehow it’s still funny.  

 “Hah, like I’d be that stupid again!” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zoro's relationship with Nami is actually super fun. I've missed them.


	6. Post-Zoro Park

 Cocoyashi Village throws a huge and impromptu party to celebrate the long-awaited ass-whooping of Arlong the Saw and his fishman pirates. Zoro Park, formerly and currently if wrongly called Arlong Park, was completely wrecked during Luffy’s fight with Arlong, and the villagers seem content to let it rot behind them as they celebrate their freedom for the first time in years.

 Luffy throws himself into the celebration, glad to be the man of the hour, although he insists he isn’t a hero because heroes have to share their meat. And who is Zoro to object to their captain’s decision to accept some free booze and grub? They don’t have anywhere to be in the morning.

 Zoro drops his ass down at the edge of the noise, away from the fire and music and dancing, too exhausted to take part in any of that bright shit. He's not dead, but that's about all the good news for the damn state of him. He’s still down to only one sword (Wadou Ichimonji, of  _course_ ) and he's got a wound from a warlord to nap off still, on top of all the shit those damn fishmen gave him. He’ll get up if he has to, of course, the melting pain in his arms and legs be damned, but _fuck._

 _FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!_ Everything hurts! Even his head feels as heavy as a mountain and it’s agony just to shift his ass a bit. Damn Hawk-Eyes! Damn Arlong! Damn _Luffy_ flinging his across the compound like that! (Zoro should yell “Switch with me” and throw Luffy into the fucking sky and see how _he_ likes it!) It hurt like a bitch and half when that nosy Cocoyashi Village doctor treated him earlier, for all his wounds just after Arlong got his shit kicked in, and it’s not much better now.

 Ship doctor? They don’t need a ship doctor. Doctors just tell Zoro that he can’t do stuff, which is bullshit, and Luffy is more focused on getting a ship musician first anyway. Zoro just needs a nap.

 Goddamnit, he’ll have to get up to get booze and grub. Shit. He didn’t think this through.

 “Hey, Zoro.”

 Zoro cracks an eye open and glares. “What do you want, witch?”

 Nami just raises her eyebrows at him, unimpressed, as she looms over him with two enormous tankards of booze in hand. She’s a little red around the eyes still, which tracks given how these villagers are bursting into tears at basically any and every provocation now that they’re free.

 “Did the doctor give you painkillers?”

 “Fuck, no.”

 Nami sighs, but doesn’t ask if this was the doctor’s decision or Zoro’s, and puts both tankards of booze down beside him. “Here, then, asshole. Do us all a favour and knock yourself out already.”

 Zoro opens his other eye, picks up a tankard, and sniffs. Huh. Smells like a screwdriver.

 “These poisoned?” he asks, before he drinks.

 Nami’s expression turns highly amused as she watches him chug. “Oh, yeah. Super poisoned, dipshit. They’re going to start melting your face off at any moment.”

 “Sick.”

 “Ugh, your sense of humour is awful.”

 Zoro shrugs, because she still smiled and went with it, and lifts the tankard. “Thanks.”

 “Don’t get used to it,” Nami answers. Then adds, “…Thanks.”

 Zoro looks up from his not-half-bad drink – it’s sour, which is at least better than _sweet_ – and exchanges a long look with the witch Luffy went to all that trouble to recruit as his navigator and nakama. He grins at her, because he totally told her so.

 “Get used to it,” he says.

 Nami snorts, then turns to re-join the party proper. “Whatever. Don’t wander off, get lost, and die!”

 “No promises for you!” Zoro calls after her, and she cackles.

 He’s already made that promise to Luffy, more or less, in swearing that he would never lose again, he’s not going to make it to Nami too. It’s not his fault that she skipped out on them and wasn’t there to hear it. Bringing him booze is good enough for that. Frankly, she’s lucky he’s not watching for suspiciously for another backstabbing when she’s acting all nice again.

 Well, that takes care of the booze, now all he needs is grub to keep himself from starving.

 “Hey, moss-for-brains.”

 Zoro looks up to scowl at the shitty cook, but he ends up staring at a plate stacked high with food instead. The guy is carrying _four plates,_ one in each hand and two more balanced on his forearms, but he sits smoothly down across from Zoro without spilling any of the food.

 Zoro is about to demand indignantly if this dickhead is going to make him _watch him eat,_ when he gets handed the plate instead. The guy slides two plates off his arm to sit neatly next to Zoro’s other tankard of booze, keeping one in his lap.

 “I don’t know how much you eat, but if it’s anything like _that_ idiot…” The shitty cook nods in the direction of Luffy’s loud laughter. “…then this should at least get you started. You need to eat. You know you shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach, right?”

 “Everyone knows that,” Zoro answers.

 What he chooses to _do_ in practice is his own fucking business. Being told what to do makes Zoro want to throw the plates back in this guy’s face, but… goddamn it, he’s starving. The food looks so good and he doesn’t want to have to get up for more. Also, the guy got Zoro three plates and Zoro can at least begrudgingly admit that three is a good number.

 “…Thanks.”

 “It’s my job to feed all of you now,” the shitty cook shrugs, and then tucks into his own, single plate of food like he actually means for them to eat together. “That includes dumbasses too damn injured to get up and feed themselves.”

 “Fuck off,” Zoro grunts, mouth already full.

 Sanji does not, in fact, fuck off.

 

~

 

 Zoro knows the shitty cook’s name now. He didn’t remember it earlier, since he thought there was no way the dickhead would actually join their crew, but Zoro caught it on the way to their fight and then asked a disbelieving Usopp for confirmation afterwards. He knows more about the shitty cook in general now too. The guy is still an unrepentant asshole, but… well… he can _fight,_ at least. He’s no soft-skinned, soft-hearted home cook.

 No-Last-Name Sanji from the Baratie can really fucking fight.

 Such that Zoro briefly considered _fusing_ with him earlier.

 It’s all Nami and Usopp and Luffy’s fault. It’s Luffy’s fault for bouncing around asking people to fuse with him all the time, Usopp’s fault for actually taking Luffy up on his bullshit, and then Nami’s fault for running away so that Zoro made that awful fucking fusion joke to her. If it weren’t for them, the intrusive thought of _fusing_ with another person never would have fucking occurred to Zoro, when it was just him and Sanji against Arlong and his officers.

 He shouldn’t even have considered the idea, once it popped up, but Luffy was a dumbass and drowning, the fishman pirates were monsters, and Zoro’s pride as a swordsman wasn’t on the line. _This Sanji guy is strong,_ Zoro thought, much against his will and anything resembling better judgement, _if Usopp and Luffy could do it, then…_

 But Zoro didn’t actually fuse with the shitty cook – didn’t offer, didn’t mention it, never will – because he still doesn’t know the guy. They’re on the same crew, they were fighting for the same dumbass captain, but Zoro barely knew the asshole’s name at the time. He missed Sanji fighting with Luffy against the Don Krieg Pirates. All Zoro really knew about Sanji is that the guy can cook and has a weak spot for women about an ocean wide, and that bullshit didn’t change just because the shitty cook quickly showed he could kick good.

 Zoro isn’t Monkey D. fucking Luffy! He can’t fuse with a perfect stranger in the middle of a fight and somehow make it _work._ Maybe it would work with Luffy, but Zoro and Sanji would have gotten their asses killed tripping over fuck knows how many feet.

 Besides, Sanji is the sort of reckless moron to fight a fucking _fishman_ underwater. Zoro decided then and there that Sanji is never allowed to call him a moron ever again… even if the shitty cook actually won his fight… and it was kind of cool as all fucking hell, actually. Damn.

 Whatever.

 Zoro is never going to fuse with another person. He would straight-up rather fucking die on the spot than tell this shitty cook he ever considered something so stupid as fusion with him, same with the rest of the crew, much less ever actually be so weak as to follow through. Zoro dislikes fusion for two _damn good_ reasons and he’s not going to stop now.

 

~

 

 The shitty cook is squinting at him right now.

 Zoro swallows his food. “…What?”

 “Did you really offer to fuse with Nami?”

 Zoro scowls at him for the stupid question. “Fuck, no. Do I look like Luffy? It was a _joke.”_

 The shitty cook looks disgruntled by this answer, but seems to believe it.

 “…But Luffy’s not joking,” he says.

 “No,” Zoro agrees.

 “Does he make _that_ offer to everyone?”

 “Only crewmembers. It’s some weird nakama thing. Usopp’s the only one who actually took him up on it,” Zoro says, gratified to know more than this smartass and to have been right. Thank _fuck,_ they have another person who seems to understand how foolish fusion is. “He asked you too, huh?”

 “Repeatedly,” Sanji says disbelievingly.

 “Yeah.”

 “Has anyone told him-?”

 “He doesn’t listen.”

 Zoro tried. Nami tried. This dickhead probably tried to tell Luffy to stop fucking offering to fuse with people. It seems like Usopp was the only one clever enough not to fucking bother with trying to beat sense into Luffy’s rubber skull, but their sniper is also the only one who fused with Luffy, so… Usopp’s still the worse dumbass.

 “How’d that fight go?” Zoro asks.

 “What?”

 “Don Kriegs.”

 “Fine. We kicked their asses and they left with their tails between their legs in the end,” Sanji answers, and pulls a box of cigarettes and a lighter out of his jacket. “Do you mind?”

 “No. Good fight?”

 The shitty cook offers Zoro a cigarette, but Zoro waves him off, still making his way through his second plate of food. Sanji lights up for himself and puts the box and lighter back into his pocket. Zoro waits, because unless he wants to drag Luffy away from the party, this guy is the only way he’s gonna know if he missed a good fight. Johnny and Yosaku are around here somewhere, but they're not here now, and they're leaving in the morning anyway. 

 “Not really. They were a crew of cheaters and cowards, mostly, relying on cheap armour and cheaper tricks. It’s no wonder the Grand Line spat them out again.”

 Zoro grunts. It’s no wonder Mihawk fucked ‘em up. Zoro would have on principle.

 “Baratie alright?” Zoro asks, because he kind of liked that place.

 “The Baratie and its chefs survive to serve another day,” Sanji answers, twirling a finger in mock celebration, before frowning. “We defended most of it.”

 “Your dad good?”

 “…What?”

 “The grumpy moustache with the peg leg. The one who called you eggplant or some shit,” Zoro elaborates dubiously. He’s not great with familial relationships, or any relationships, mostly because he doesn’t give a shit, but he’s pretty sure he knows a dad bickering with their kid when he sees them. “Your dad or boss or whatever.”

 “Zeff?” Sanji grimaces. “Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. Shitty bastard’s still kicking.”

 Thank fuck, Zoro doesn’t have to pretend to be compassionate about anyone’s loss. Well, that crosses out one reason why the shitty cook is sitting here with him instead of partying or being literally anywhere else, not that Zoro actually gives a shit what the reason is so long as the guy keeps being quiet. A few plates of food is enough to buy a seat for a while, in Zoro’s book.

 Actually, so long as this dickhead’s here…

 “What changed your mind?”

 “What?”

 “I thought you didn’t approve of ambitions,” Zoro drawls.

 The question clicks on the shitty cook’s face and his jaw clenches.

 “Some of us have less stupid ambitions than throwing ourselves at ambivalent warlords who’ll cut us in half with a butter knife,” he answers, before taking a long drag of his cigarette. “I’m going to find All Blue.”

 He’s got a glint in his eyes like he’s expecting some sort of challenge over that.

 “The fuck’s that?” Zoro says instead.

 So, the shitty cook explains about this supposed secret ocean filled with all the fish in the world. Sanji’s entire face changes when he talks about it, alternating between wistful wonder and remembering himself enough to keep glancing at Zoro with that challenging glint, as though Zoro is suddenly supposed to react to something. Like Zoro is supposed to stop eating and denounce the rumours or the clues the cook lists off that point towards the existence of this “All Blue”.

 When he’s done, trailing off, Sanji looks at Zoro expectantly.

 “…I guess that makes sense for a cook.”

 “…You _guess,”_ Sanji repeats disdainfully, and drops his cold cigarette onto his empty plate. “Do you think All Blue is real?”

 Zoro frowns at him. “Why does it matter what I think?”

 “Good fucking question.”

 Zoro sighs and rephrases himself, because he _is_ actually aware that other people can’t understand him. Kuina taught him that other people’s brains worked in weird loops and Zoro doesn’t want to get into this shit more than once.

 “I don’t see any reason why it _shouldn’t_ exist,” Zoro says. “I don’t see any reason why you should give a shit what I think I know. If it’s real, then you’re going to find it. If it’s not real, then you still get to travel the whole damn world, and that’ll be pretty close. I haven’t thought about this shit before. That’s a cook’s stupid dream, not mine.”

 “…Did you just call my dream stupid?”

 “Yeah,” Zoro says. “You called mine stupid.”

 “Because you got yourself cut in half chasing after a damn monster, shithead!”

 “Did not!”

 “It was stupid as shit!”

 “If you get to call my dream stupid, then I get to call your dream stupid.”

 “What kind of childish logic is that?!” Sanji demands.

 Ugh. If this fucking guy is willing to throw away his attachment to life for his dream alongside the rest of them, then he’s got a bit more room to talk shit about dreams. Not much, though, because he’s no fucking swordsman. Can’t he catch the fucking point?

  _“Your_ dream is stupid for me,” Zoro says bluntly. “And mine is stupid for you. You’re not a swordsman and I’m not a shitty cook. I’m not a map-maker or a sniper or a bouncy rubber idiot either.”

 Sanji looks surprised, then snorts. “Cartographer.”

 Zoro ignores his bullshit, trying to remember what the fuck it was that Luffy said to Arlong earlier. He said that it was because he couldn’t do shit that he needed friends. Luffy can’t make maps or even draw for shit, so he needs Nami. Nami couldn’t fight Arlong, so she needed Luffy.

 “I don’t know the first fucking thing about fish or cooking, or about guns or map-making.”

 “Cartography.”

 “Fuck off. Just… me chasing your dream would be pretty damn stupid.”

 Sanji hums. “I guess.”

 “You _guess,”_ Zoro says, mimicking Sanji’s earlier disdain.

 “Ahhh, fuck off,” Sanji repeats, but he’s amused now, rather than dubious or defensive.

 Zoro puts down his last, empty plate. “Nah. What does it fucking matter if I think All Blue is real or not? How the fuck would I know one way or the other? You think it’s worth finding out. Isn’t that enough for you? It’s not stupid for you. Just like my dream’s not stupid for me.”

 Zoro’s got his own definitions of good for him, thanks. At least all he has to do is fight one guy.

 Sanji is silent for nearly a minute.

 “…Your brain must be a very simple place, moss-head,” he says finally.

 “Fuck you.”

 “Who would have thought that something so thoughtful would come from someone who doesn’t think at all?” the shitty cook continues mockingly, before he visibly remembers something and scowls accusingly. “I wouldn’t have thought you were listening to Luffy, when you didn’t even listen to lovely Nojiko’s tragic story of Nami-swan’s plight!”

 “Nami doesn’t need anyone to speak for her,” Zoro says decidedly, instead of insisting that he heard enough. “If she doesn’t want to say it herself, then I don’t want to hear anyone else’s explanation.”

 The shitty cook’s scowl lessens… and he gives Zoro an unreadable look.

 “That’s… also stupid,” Sanji says finally.

 Zoro grunts. “Fuck off. Everyone ought to speak for their own damn selves.”

 “Not everyone _can,”_ Sanji counters.

 “Only if they’re dead.”

 “…What the fuck.”

 “Only the dead can’t speak for themselves,” Zoro elaborates, annoyed, because he’s eaten and drank and he’d like to fucking sleep now. “Everyone else can speak the fuck up on their own. No one else is going to get it right.”

 The shitty cook stares disbelievingly. “What if people won’t listen?”

 “Make ‘em.”

 “What if they _can’t?”_ Sanji demands, through gritted teeth.

 “Find different people.”

 “What?”

 “Find _different_ people,” Zoro snaps, his eyes already closed. “If they won’t listen, then they’re not worth talking to, so you find someone else to talk to. Either Nami was too fucking cowardly to speak for herself or she didn’t think we were worth talking to, and neither of those are good enough.”

 This whole thing would have been so much easier if Nami wasn’t such a lying witch.

 Thank fuck that she came around in the end.

 “I have… I have no _fucking clue_ how your brain works,” the shitty cook professes.

 “Fuck _off,_ Curly Brow.”

 “Fuck you too, moss-for-brains,” Sanji counters easily, still not fucking off, and then sighs. “It was the lovely Nojiko’s story too, you know. That brave, beautiful woman told us the innermost story of her broken heart for the sake of her beloved, long-suffering sister, and you were too much of a _moss-headed brute_ to appreciate it.”

 “She did it for Nami and Nami could speak for herself,” Zoro repeats.

 “Her heart was in the grip of a vicious pirate!”

 “She could still talk.”

 “Should I try _kicking_ some sense into the thick skull of yours? Is that it?”

 “Just try it, you shit cook,” Zoro answers, and _ugh,_ he should probably open his eyes and get up for this. He wants to beat this annoying shitty cook up, but he also wants to sleep already.

 “I _should,”_ Sanji mutters. “Since talking apparently doesn’t fucking work on moss. But, ahhh, I can’t beat up someone so pathetic. _I_ am going to spend the rest of my night flirting with the lovely ladies of this beautiful village, and _you_ can sit here and turn into fungus.”

 Zoro is _not_ relieved that they’re not fighting. Zoro’s not opening his eyes right now because he could totally take the shitty cook with his eyes closed, not because he’s falling asleep. He could totally fuck this guy up right now, even if he only has one sword right now. If there is any relief, it’s for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Zoro’s stomach feels bloated, his head is all warm, and his agonized limbs and everything have vetoed the idea of ever getting up again.

 He ignores Sanji running off, towards all that noise and brightness. Whatever. They’ll fight again later. Sanji’s annoying as fuck and Zoro still has to test their new crewmember’s strength himself.

 Zoro can’t believe he ever considered fusing with that guy.

 It’s all Luffy’s fault, probably. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sanji and Zoro are actually shown sitting next to each other, during the party after Arlong is defeated, and I figured it was a good point to slip in a conversation or two between them.


	7. Pre-Loguetown

 The official additions of the shitty cook and the thieving witch to their crew give a new sense of realness to their journeys, just like the previous addition of a sniper and a proper ship did. Under their captain’s command, they’re going to the Grand Line. The _Going Merry_ will take them there, Nami will guide them there, Zoro’s strength and Usopp’s eyes will help get them there, and Sanji will keep them all alive and fed. Luffy’s wild dream and wilder determination feels… more solid… all around them. You could almost taste it.

 Some part of Zoro always knew that he might have to wade his way into the infamous Grand fucking Line someday, chasing after the travelling title-holder of World’s Strongest. Dracule “Hawk-Eyes” Mihawk wanders the world as he damn well pleases. Zoro also always imagined that he’d have to fight his way through all the monstrous competition before he reached that final dance at the end of the world.

 Their meeting at the Baratie had been too early. Zoro had been ready to fight, but not to win, and he needed to win.

 It’s different… heading off to follow his dream in the company of other people. It’s even more surprising heading off in the company of people he actually _likes,_ having become somewhat fond of all of them against his better judgement (except fucking _Sanji,_ that guy is a dickhead).

 Zoro will still be fulfilling his dream alone, though, because there can’t be more than one World’s Greatest Swordsman. No one with dreams like theirs isn’t a little bit of a fool, but Zoro refuses to be _that_ kind of fool for this. There’s no damn point to his promise to Kuina if he doesn’t do it alone. No one else will understand; he resigned himself a long time ago, to laying down his whole life if need be, to proving he’s strong enough for two people all on his own.

 It’s strange to be changing his vision of the future again now – to be surrounded by like-minded people he might begrudgingly call friends, who will carry him to his dreams as he carries them to their own dreams. He didn’t expect to have this. It's not like Johnny and Yosaku when they were hanging on to him. Zoro's fusion-foolish old partners sobbed their farewells after Arlong, unwilling to any longer risk being painted with that same "pirate" brush by the Marines, who already viewed bounty-hunters as a bare step up from banditry. This crew is different, not so temporary, and Zoro can actually see himself keeping company with these people far, far, far into the otherwise unknown future. 

 Zoro leans back and stretches his legs out over the deck for comfort. Between the shitty cook and the thieving witch’s bossiness, Zoro can just sit, nap, and let his stupid wounds heal properly. He drifts off listening to the waves against Merry’s sides and the wind through the sails and Nami’s precious tangerine trees, to Sanji shouting at Luffy to keep his hands off the fruit again and Luffy shouting back about the importance of a captain’s hunger, and to Usopp and Nami’s soft, unbothered conversation nearby about stocking the ship up in Loguetown.

 It’s… it’s not a bad vision of the future, really.

 

~

 

_The difference between their skill sets yawned impossibly vast as soon as the first sword was swung, and it only gets wider the longer Hawk-Eyes allows this fight to continue. This is no duel between equals. The warlord’s strength and speed are monstrous. His grace is impeccable. He could end this dance in a heartbeat and Zoro’s disbelieving fury mounts at being toyed with so fucking shamelessly._

_“Such **ferocity** ,” Hawk-Eyes says, and he makes it sound like a joke. _

_Zoro didn’t train so hard until today, and he didn’t spill all the blood, sweat, and tears that he had, just to fight against the stupid little knife in Hawk-Eyes’ hands. He worked hard to make himself strong enough for himself and Kuina. He’s not this weak; he can’t be this weak._

_“I trained to **win** ,” Zoro snarls. _

_Hawk-Eyes looks into him, coldly expectant, and completely infuriating._

_What’s stopping you now?_

 

~

 

 Zoro rubs his face, trying to get the grog of sleep and Mihawk’s fucking eyes out of his head, and picks himself and Wadou Ichimonji up off the hard deck. Without anything better to do, too damn tired and aching to train just yet, Zoro follows his nose towards the kitchen. Well, he doesn’t _follow_ his nose, because it can’t give directions for shit, but he smells food and there’s only one kitchen on this fucking ship, so it’s basically the same thing.

 The shitty cook is preparing dinner while holding conversation with the thieving witch, who’s charting a path on her maps, each with their own grace of long practice. Usopp is at the table next to Nami, dutifully attempting to make a shopping list of the ideal sea voyage supplies Sanji is rattling off for them. They all look up as Zoro drags himself into the room.

 “Where’s Luffy?”

 “Playing lookout and napping in the nest,” Nami answers, before going back to her work. 

 “Better that than rolling off the shitty figurehead into the sea,” Sanji grumbles lowly, his hands never having stopped moving.

 Zoro looks and yeah, the tips of the shitty cook’s hair are wet. Hah, it happened again and Zoro must have slept through the splash this time. Looks like Curly Brow is at least good for fishing for dumbass captains who can’t remember they literally can’t fucking swim.

 Zoro drops himself down in a seat next to Usopp, crosses his legs, closes his eyes, and leans back, as though that’ll somehow make his chest stop being in fucking agony for a single waking minute. After a few seconds, Usopp asks Sanji for clarification on something, then his pen starts scritching again when Nami and Sanji both answer him. Zoro just focuses on breathing, having nothing to add to the conversation. He needs to pick up two new swords in Loguetown, after everything that's happened recently, but fuck if he's asking any of these losers to tell a shit blade from something decent. Zoro willfully tunes out the smell of the food, the shitty cook swooning over his “Nami-swan’s” brilliance, and the rest of his crewmates’ boring conversation.

 

~

 

  _Zoro is lying on the grass, in the middle of fucking nowhere and the middle of the goddamn night, and somehow that stupid girl still shows up to look down on him. At least she’s scowling at him, instead of her smug-ass leer when she drops him into the dirt every day during training at the dojo. But also, what the hell is that disgusted look for?_

_Also, what the hell is that smell?_

_“You’re not going to get better like this, stupid,” the girl says._

_“Shut up,” Zoro tells her, and rolls himself up._

_Or, well, he tries. It takes three stumbling attempts, since he’s worked himself to the damn bone tonight. It’s really fucking embarrassing; Zoro glares in the girl’s direction, then at her when the black spots dance back out of his sight. Why does it have to be her who keeps finding him?_

_Kuina scoffs at him, and points imperiously with a sheathed Wadou Ichimonji. “You keep running off and skipping meals! I’m sick of taking bowls to your empty room every night! What’s your problem with eating at the dojo anyway!”_

_What wouldn’t be his problem with eating at the damn dojo? Zoro isn’t here because he wants to make friends with any of the other snots or assistant teachers who live there too. And who wants to listen to the owner of the dojo bickering with his beloved kid all the time? It’s humiliating slinking into meals like a loser and suffering even more of this girl’s cocky smugness._

_“Who can eat with your ugly mug around?”_

_Kuina just sneers at him. “You’re so stupid! How are you even supposed to get strong if your body doesn’t have anything to work with? You need to eat your vegetables to grow big! And anything’s better than not starving, you picky dumbass; your body need food to work! Everyone knows this! You don’t want to be weaker than you could be, do you?”_

_Zoro opens his mouth to tell her to fuck right off, but… he just ends up gaping when he follows his nose and spots the bowl of food Kuina is holding off to one side. Kuina notices his staring, curls her lip, and begrudgingly thrusts the meal into his hands._

_“I told you; I’m sick of taking bowls to your empty room! Here, take this, and don’t make me force you to not starve!”_

_Part of him wants to throw the bowl back in her face, but… it’s still warm somehow. Zoro’s stomach mutinies on him immediately._

_“Well? Aren’t you going to say ‘thank you’?”_

_Zoro scowls at the girl, all too aware that she could take this bowl back from him and he couldn’t do shit to stop her. He hates this whole arrangement. He hates the stupid fucking promise he made when he first challenged her._

_“…Thank you,” he says, and hopes it sounds like the “fuck off” he means it as._

_Kuina crosses her arms. “Get used to it, stupid. People look out for each other here. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to come around to not being some wandering loner anymore.”_

_He’s busy eating the bowl before she can take it back (it’s good, oh, man, food is so good), but Zoro pauses for a second to scowl at her bullshit again. He’s used to relying on himself, because people will screw him off the second they decide not to like him, and Zoro’s shit at making people like him and doesn’t give a shit anyway. Sooner or later, these people are going to get sick of him and kick him out._

_Kuina does not, however, fuck off._

_“…It’s not just the food stopping you,” the girl adds, after a long pause. “You’re not going to get better on your own like this, you know. No one with the skills to be the World’s Greatest Swordsman ever got there alone! You can admit you need help, you know! You need to start really listening to my dad and the other teachers! And… you need a real sparring partner.”_

_“…What?”_

_“I’m sick of you randomly jumping out at me for rematches all the time and not pulling your weight around the place! And I want a real challenge! A real rival! My dad isn’t… he won’t let me… whatever…. No one at the dojo even knows anything about you! Not where you come from! Not what you like! You won’t talk to us!”_

_“…Are you asking me for a rematch?” Zoro has no idea what’s happening now, only that he probably doesn’t like it. A rematch and food coming to him is good, but there’s probably a catch. “Are you trying to make me do your chores now?”_

_“I’m trying to make you do your chores! Look, my dad won’t… I need more practice and I can’t get better alone either. Do you want to fight together or not, Roronoa Zoro?”_

 

~

 

 Zoro tunes back in when he hears his name, reluctantly cracking open an eye.

 “What?”

 Usopp squeaks, which probably means he thought Zoro was fully asleep and said something in this conversation he thinks Zoro’ll punch him for suggesting. Zoro glares at him because the long-nose might be right about that if it was some bullshit.

 “We were- we were, uh, just talking about nothing!”

 “Yeah?”

 Out of the corner of his eye, Zoro sees Nami’s lips curl up wickedly before she elaborates, “We were talking about fusion.”

 “… _Yeah?”_

 Usopp’s knees start knocking together, even though he’s sitting down, his eyes going wild. “O-oh, I was just saying that it s-surprised me – it surprised me j-just a bit – that you and Luffy h-had never fused, when we first met, _beforeIknewbetter!_ I, ahah, know better now! I know much, _much_ better now, so don’t you worry!”

 Zoro slouches further into his seat and grunts. “You’d better.”

 “Why did it surprise you?” Nami says curiously.

 “Oh, well, they’re both monsters! Uh, well, they’re both super strong, I mean! And they get along so well! I almost couldn’t believe that they’d only known each other for about a week when I met them! I thought it must have been much, _much_ longer!”

 Nami’s jaw drops. “They _what?”_

 Zoro looks at Usopp suspiciously. “How’d you know that?”

 “…I, uh, I just asked Luffy? He told me.”

 “You two idiots only knew each other for a few _days_ when you showed up in Orange Town?” Nami demands, putting aside her tools for a moment. “Are you kidding me right now?!” 

 "The fuck is Orange Town? Oh, the fight with the clown and his sideshow weirdos. Yeah." 

"... Clown," Sanji repeats flatly. 

 Nami drops her head against the table. “This shouldn't be surprising,” she mutters. “Why is this surprising? It’s not. It’s really not surprising. Ugh, where did you two morons both even _come from?”_ When she lifts her head again, she drops it on her hand instead, and sighs. “Well, at least you’re too selfish to fuse in a fight with anyone, so we won’t be seeing any idiot monster fusions anytime soon.”

 Zoro scowls at her. “Fusions are stupid.”

 Nami’s brow furrows and Usopp grimaces, but it’s Sanji who snorts and says without turning around, “You sound like a shitty kid who hates a vegetable he’s never even tried.”

 “Fuck you. I have reasons.”

 He’s got some damn good reasons.

 Usopp’s chair scoots away from him, but Nami shifts focus before Zoro can start a fucking fight with the dickhead making dinner.

 “Sanji,” she coos, with sick-inducing sweetness. “Have _you_ ever fused with anyone?”

 If Zoro got that invasive sort of question, he might have fucking flipped on her. This entire conversation is rude as shit. Why the fuck are they even talking about something stupid like this? But the cook doesn’t so much as pause his work.

 “Ahhh, I should be so lucky to know a perfect fusion with a woman like you, my dear Nami-swan! Alas, I have never had the chance! My love might be too strong for such things!” Sanji answers, just as sweetly, switching tones immediately like the two-faced asshole he is. The shitty cook smiles over his shoulder at Nami and Zoro glares at him.

 "Oh, poor you,” Nami says.

 “Your sympathy soothes my wounded soul!” Sanji assures her, as he subtly flips Zoro off.

 Usopp’s chair scrapes hurriedly against the floor again.

 “So,” Sanji continues, his voice slowly dropping back down again to less grating tones, “I know the marimo doesn’t know anything about anything, but why _does_ Luffy make his offers of fusion? It’s… a unique approach. Do any of you know _why_ he does that?”

 “Who knows why Luffy does anything?” Nami drawls.

 Sanji laughs. “Good point, my swan!”

 Well, at least she’s finally caught on to the madness. Zoro doesn’t answer, partly because he doesn’t fucking want to and partly because he doesn’t have a better answer. Who honestly fucking knows why Luffy does anything?

 Usopp looks thoughtful, biting his lip, before saying. “Maybe he’s lonely.”

 They all look at him, then all physically turn themselves to look at him properly. Their sniper gulps.

 “Lonely?” Nami repeats dubiously. “Luffy?”

  _“Of course I don’t know how to fight with swords, dumbass!”_ Luffy had shouted at Arlong, back at Zoro Park, ready and willing to break that smug motherfucker’s teeth as many times as necessary. _“I don’t know a thing about navigation either! I can’t cook! And I can’t lie either! I’m confident that I wouldn’t be able to survive if other people aren’t there to help me!”_

 Luffy was just as cheerful and confident through most of that as he always was.

 “Well, ahah, it’s just a random guess! Just a random thought that I had, maybe,” Usopp says hurriedly. “It’s probably wrong. It’s probably definitely wrong. Don’t pay any attention to me! I don’t know anything about anything either, right! Mwahaha!”

 Usopp’s forced laughter goes on for a few seconds, before it dies off awkwardly.

 No one says anything for the next minute.

 All of this is why Zoro doesn’t fucking talk to people.

 This is some bullshit.

 The shitty cook turns back to his work first, then Nami picks up her tools again and walks along one of her maps with a hand, though she’s still looking at the long-nose, and Zoro doesn’t budge. Usopp sinks into his seat like he’s trying to melt into a shame puddle. Like regret will do anything.

 “…He said it’s fun,” Zoro says finally.

 Luffy’s said a lot of naïve shit about trust and friendship and being known, but somehow it’s the _fun_ part that’s sticking like a damn knife in Zoro’s brain. Sure, yeah, fusion seems all fun and games until someone takes an unexpected blow to the head.

 Zoro hauls himself to his feet, a sheathed Wadou Ichimonji in hand. Nami raises her eyebrows at him and Usopp looks at him nervously, like they think he’s about to fling himself at an unimpressed, expectant Sanji and beat the annoyingness right out of their shitty cook. He’s not, though, he’s just had enough of this nosy fucking conversation and Wadou Ichimonji is his only sword left now, and goes with him everywhere. He didn’t have anything better to do, but coming down here was still a mistake.

 Speaking of nosiness, Zoro looks at Usopp before he leaves, and he says, decidedly, for better or worse, “Someone’ll fuck Luffy over someday on this. Don’t fuck him up.”

 “Uh, what? Alright?”

 Zoro clears out without trying to clear up Usopp’s confusion. It’s a simple warning to understand if you think for a fucking minute. Zoro might like to do everything in threes if he can, but he’s not great with crowds and they say that three makes one. Fuck knows what four is then.

 

~

 

  _The single, small blade Dracule Mihawk wields better than Zoro’s three katana is sharp, but nothing feels so cutting as those piercing yellow eyes and the cold, mocking words the man wields._

_Zoro hasn’t felt so weak… so small and so truly alone… in a long time._

_“What burdens you so? What do you still desire at the extent of your strength, weakling?”_

 

~

 

 Since he doesn’t want to go to bed and doesn’t want to sprawl out alone on the deck again, Zoro finds himself climbing up to go see their surprisingly elusive captain. It’s agony in his chest again, but he’s put off training for naps long enough today and nothing else clears his head of stupid bullshit like pain. Might as well stretch a bit for the session he’s probably going to put himself through after dinner.

 “Hey, Zoro,” Luffy greets brightly. “How’s it going? Is dinner ready yet?!”

 “Not yet.”

 “Uuuuuugh. I’m sooooo hungry.”

 Turns out that Nami doesn’t know everything: Luffy is definitely not sleeping. Their captain is sitting on the railing of the nest, swinging his bare feet, turning his straw hat over and over again in his hands. He grins wider as Zoro climbs into the nest and sits down against the mast. He doesn’t ask what chased Zoro up here, if the question even occurs to him.

 No, he just starts daydreaming about dinner aloud, about all the delicious things he imagines the shitty cook is making for them.

 “We don’t have any of that,” Zoro says.

 “Whaaat? Nooo, we gotta have some tiger meat, it’s great!”

 Zoro can’t say he’s ever thought about eating tiger – something about that seems a bit off to him. “We’re out of nearly everything except Nami’s tangerines,” he reports, because their last stops didn’t have that much to spare against Luffy’s bottomless stomach. He finds himself snorting at the horrified face that his insatiable captain makes.

 “But she won’t let me eat those!”

 “They’re bickering in the kitchen about supplies right now. Tell her we need special food.” Zoro cannot _wait_ to see Nami’s face when Luffy requests more weird, expensive shit. Her face when Luffy casually admitted to having eaten wolf and crocodile before was so fucking funny.

 Maybe that’ll shut up their stupid fusion gossiping.

 “I will! I’ll tell her at dinner! I bet they have _aaaall_ sorts of cool food in Loguetown! It’s the beginning of pirate adventures!” Luffy declares agreeably, and then begins daydreaming aloud about all the great foods he imagines that the island will have and that the shitty cook will make for them.

 Zoro just sits back and listens. He kind of wants to say that Luffy’s dreams about islands and houses made of sweets sound unlikely – he straight-up tells Luffy that it sounds disgusting – and that their unrepentant asshole cook won’t be making that happen, but… Luffy has a way of making impossible things happen. When Zoro joined up with Luffy, they didn’t have shit, but now they have a good ship and a good crew. So, maybe Zoro can just let Luffy keep dreaming foolish things.

 Eventually, Zoro’s eyes close and Luffy trails off, even though Zoro says that he’s not sleeping when Luffy pokes him. Zoro ends up listening to the sounds of the ship again, and to his captain humming to himself and kicking against the nest. When they first met, Zoro never would have guessed that Luffy could be almost quiet, but the constant reminder of company isn’t as annoying as it could be.

 He cracks open one eye to get a better look at his captain, who might still be the subject of conversation below for all either of them know. Luffy’s staring out at the distance, looking surprisingly thoughtful. Lost in thought, really, when any of them might’ve joked that Luffy didn’t have enough thoughts to get lost in. There’s nothing out there to see, no ships and no islands, unless some have appeared in the last ten minutes, just endless Blue stretching out onto the horizon.

 Zoro wonders, for a moment, what Luffy is looking for on the other side of it besides Raftel.  

 “…Who have you fused with before?”

 Luffy looks over. “Huh?”

 “Who’ve you fused with before? Usolu wasn’t the first time you did that.”

 “Oh!” Luffy grins and lies down on the nest’s railing. “Yeah, no, it wasn’t! I fused with my brothers! We all grew up in the jungle together! Grandpa said we weren’t supposed to fuse, because it was too dangerous and he thought we didn’t know what we were doing, but fusing was fun and it made us all stronger. Asabolu was the best!”

 Zoro mulls this over, then forces himself to ask, “…Where are your brothers now?”

 Luffy’s grin falls. “Um…”

 Zoro exhales and hits his head back against the mast. Yeah, that’s how it always ends. Even if you’re lucky enough to get something good for a while, fusion is still so fucking stupid. Johnny and Yosaku will have to deal with that one day, and it’ll be absolute shit for whichever one of them is left. 

 “Sabo died years an’ years ago, but Ace left to go become a pirate a few years before me,” Luffy says. “He’s out there on the Grand Line somewhere. I’m gonna ask him to join our crew! But… he might not want to join… because he’s got his own crew now. We decided we had to become pirates by ourselves, because he couldn’t be looking after me all the time and I didn’t even want him to anyway! I’m not a baby! And you can’t have more than one captain, you know? Unless you fuse all the time or something, shishishi!”

 “…What kind of fool wants to be fused all the time,” Zoro says to himself.

 Luffy tilts his head. “I dunno! Some people might like it, I guess, if they found the right person! But I couldn’t be fused with Ace all the time! He’s super fun, but he’s so…” Luffy gestures wildly, trying to illustrate something inexplicable, scrunching up his face with the effort. “He’s so… ugh! So weird inside! All the time! Even when he’s smiling!”

 Zoro has no idea what Luffy means, but he kind of gets it. Other people’s brains work in weird loops. For all that Zoro actually, miraculously likes their little crew here, he still doesn’t like singing and eating and all that stuff as much as the next guy here. He likes some good company every now and again, but he needs some damn quiet too.

 “You don’t think it’ll make you weaker? Fusing with people like that?”

 Luffy stops fuming at the sky and tilts his head the other way. “…Why would it?”

 Zoro doesn’t know what to say to this. It’s a little fucking overwhelming how much of an idiot Luffy sounds like sometimes. There are a few damn good reasons fusion is only for fools, but Zoro doesn’t have the words for any of them. Everything bounces off Luffy’s rubber skull anyway.

 “There can only be one Pirate King,” Zoro says finally.

 “Unless you were a fusion all the time!” Luffy says again, delightedly. “Shishishi! Nakama are important, but I don’t know if I could share my dream, even with a nakama. You don’t want to be Pirate King too, Zoro, do you?”

 “Not one damn bit.”

 Luffy laughs again. “Good! I don’t want to share!”

 “Good.”

 Zoro’s stomach grumbles loudly in the silence that falls between them, and Luffy chuckles at the mutiny.

 “Shut up, it’s not funny.”

 “It’s your stomach saying it’s time for dinner, Zoro! Aaah, Sanji is being so slooow!”

 “You tell him that. See how it goes.”

 “I will!” Luffy declares imperiously, and sticks his tongue out.

 Two can play at that game. Zoro sticks his tongue out back. Luffy’s mouth turns up at the edges at the challenge, then the rubber idiot grabs the end of his tongue with his hand and stretches it out to be nearly two feet long. It’s fucking ridiculous and Zoro bursts out laughing.

 “What the fuck is that-?! _Ow._ Shit. Goddamn it, ow.”

 Luffy lets his tongue snap back into his mouth. “What’s wrong?”

 “My fucking chest again. Damn Mihawk.”

 Luffy’s face scrunches up. “You’re still hurt! You need to eat more so you can get better!” He sits up and looks around wildly, like there’s going to be some roast floating in the sky around them.

 Zoro scowls. “I need to sleep it off.”

 “Aha!”

 “What?”

 Luffy tosses one rubbery arm so it wraps around the mast, bites his lip, and then draws back his other arm and flings it down towards the deck. Zoro can’t see what Luffy is aiming for, but he hears the dangerous rustle of leaves and sees his captain’s face light up. When Luffy’s rubber arm snaps back, he drops a tangerine into Zoro’s lap.

 “There! Don’t die, Zoro!”

 Zoro looks up at him disbelievingly. “Nami’s going to kill you.”

 “I’m captain! She doesn’t have to know!” Luffy whispers loudly, and winks. And then when he tries to unwrap his anchoring arm from around the mast, he loses his balance on the nest’s railing.

 It’s only Zoro lunging forward to grab his shirt that stops the fall.

 “Whoops,” Luffy says, underwhelmingly, and uses Zoro’s arm to pull himself back into the nest. He basically crawls _onto_ Zoro, so the both of them fall back against the floor of the nest again, and then he giggles at this like he didn’t just nearly die.

 Zoro’s chest is in agony right now and he breathes deeply to quell that. Luffy _didn’t_ just nearly die. He’s an unstoppable idiot with a rubber skull. He bounces back from every fall Zoro’s seen him take.

 “Thanks, Zoro!”

 “Be more careful or you’re gonna fall into the ocean again, idiot.”

 “Aw, Sanji was there, though. Did he tell? I’m just not used to being on the ocean all the time! There’s water _everywhere_ now!” Luffy says, as he crawls off Zoro to flop beside him, and then puts the tangerine in Zoro’s face. “Are you gonna eat this? I’ll eat it if you don’t wanna eat it, but you’re more important and you’re hurt.”

 Zoro sighs. “Yeah, fine, give it here.”

 Zoro peels the tangerine and it smells a bit like a screwdriver – in that they’re probably screwed when Nami somehow smells them out and drives them off the edge of the fucking ship for their crime. It tastes really good, though. Zoro savours it. He also gives half of the slices it to Luffy, since his captain is leaning into his shoulder and practically drooling, and Luffy devours it.

 “Thanks,” Zoro says afterwards.

 Luffy wipes his sticky fingers on Zoro’s shirt and beams. “What are nakama for?” 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter left. I wanted to explore some more of the early crew relationships before we got to Loguetown proper. Zoro just wandering in and out of ship areas to nap with or without company depending on his mood is funny to me, Zoro having nightmares of sorts about Mihawk seems right to me, and Zoro and Luffy are super cute together. Also, if Sanji's answer to Nami's question seemed evasive... yeah.


	8. Loguetown I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This final chapter got very out of hand in length, but the fic's all done now. The end should be fun.

 Loguetown stinks. The port town stinks of the sea, of course, and the enormous fish market just off the docks reeks of fish. It’s also a pretty big town, so it stinks like people too – merchant wares like oils and perfumes, trash like shit and refuse, restaurants and street vendors cooking up food, and the regular old sweat and grime of the hustling crowds. But underneath all those things, Loguetown, the last port for pirates before the Grand Line, stinks of smoke.

 It’s not quite cigarette smoke (although there’s plenty of that, not only thanks to the shitty cook) and not quite barbecue smoke (though there’s some of that too) and not quite campfire smoke (which wouldn’t make sense). Zoro can’t tell what was burned. It’s a little bit of everything, but still not a bad smell exactly. There’s no haze or dark clouds in the sky or anything. The smell is stronger in some places and nearly unnoticeable in others, but it’s just about everywhere here and something about it sets him on edge.

 “It stinks of smoke here,” Zoro observed aloud to his crew, when they first docked.

 Usopp sniffed. “Huh, it really does. D-do you think-?”

 “So?” Nami said ungratefully. “It’s a town. They all stink.”

 Sanji took a squinty drag of his cigarette. “You got a problem with smoke, suddenly?”

 “Oh, food! Meat skewers!” Luffy shouted. “We should stop and have barbecue! It’s the best!”

 So, nothing really came of that warning. The shitty cook went off to the smelly fish market and the green grocers, beside himself with options. Usopp went to stock up on his own supplies. Nami went off to shop with a wide smile that would have stopped Zoro from asking what for even if he gave a shit. Luffy went to gawk at the old Pirate King’s execution platform here.

 Since Zoro has some new swords to buy after all those world-changing fights, he went his own way as well. But he’d still like it fucking noted: he noticed the damn smoke.

 

~

 

  _It’s quiet in their spot. Sunrise has come and gone, without any sign of the other half of Zoro’s training, and his first reaction is annoyance. He hates missing any of their spars – three a day, if they can, which is the perfect number – but he hates missing the morning one especially, because it sets the sour tone for the rest of the damn day._

_Spending the day apart from Kuina leaves him unsettled, never knowing exactly what she’s thinking for most of the day. Kuina’s mood is foul every time she argues with her father._

_Zoro scowls as he completely his training alone, which never used to bother him before. He should know better than to rely on someone else, but he knows it’s not Kuina he can’t count on, it’s everyone else that’s the problem. He trusts her. Someday, when it’s just the two of them against the rest of the word, they’ll only have to separate if they choose it._

_There can only be one World’s Greatest Swordsman between them. Kuina says it won’t mean anything if they do it together and she’s usually when about things, when she’s not being super fucking wrong about things. Zoro’s the one who’s going to be the World’s Greatest Swordsman and he’s right about everything, but if he’s ever not right about something, then it’s Kuina who’s right. She’s determined to be strong on her own and she’s right._

_It’s also true that they’ll be so much stronger together if they’re both trying to be strong on their own. Zoro’s not wrong that if they’re both strong enough to be the World’s Greatest Swordsman on their own, then together they’ll be unstoppable. They’ll stay at the top together forever that way, Zoro knows it. One victor, but never alone._

_It’s not a bad vision of the future, he thinks. Kuina will see it too someday._

_Zoro picks up his swords and heads back to the dojo to begin the day. He’ll get the chance to cross swords with Kuina sometime today, unless Koshiro, their teacher and her father, is in a really bad mood and tries to separate them. Kuina always feels better after they spar together and she’s kicked his ass, after Zoro’s cut through all her stupid, twisting doubts about inherently not being good enough due to her gender._

_He still hasn’t beaten her! But_ he’s _not giving up! She’s not allowed to give up on their foolish dream and take up a quiet life. If Zoro has to physically carry Kuina and her sword out of this village, off this island, and out to sea by himself, then so be it._

 

~

 

 In the meanwhile: swords.

 Of the three blades that Luffy returned to him from Morgan’s shit son, only Wadou Ichimonji is left. (Thank fuck that it’s Wadou, at least.) Zoro can’t do his Three-Swords Style with only one sword, because that wouldn’t make any damn sense. He can’t keep borrowing shit from other people either, especially since Johnny and Yosaku said their goodbyes after Zoro Park. What sort of swordsman doesn’t have his own swords?

 Zoro’s got his pride, damn it, and people to make proud.

 Zoro is meandering through the streets, looking for this impossible-to-find sword shop that people have said should be around here, when he happens across two pirates harassing some young woman.

 He’s not one for heroics – that sword the woman has at her hip looks _nice,_ she ought to know how to use the damn thing – but he is one for a fight and the bad directions he’s been given are pissing him off. So, he stops, just in case the fight about to happen here gets out of hand and someone wants to fucking dance with him.

 The woman kicks her harassers’ asses, though, by herself and in short order. It’s impressive enough that Zoro forgets to be pissed off about it. Her swordwork is just as nice as her sword. Not like Mihawk nice or anything – nowhere near that nice, because _no one_ is near that monster’s grace – but not bad. At a glance, Zoro might guess she could be close to his own level, and he kind of wants to fight her to find out.

 She drops her glasses, though, dealing with these losers. When she makes her move and cuts them down, her oversized glasses go flying off her face and clatter near Zoro’s feet. He picks them up for her, because why not. Maybe he can trade them for some better damn directions from a fellow swordfighter.

 The woman crouches down for her glasses at the same time, audibly surprised when Zoro presses them into her hands. “Oh!”

 She smells strongly of smoke, he notices absentmindedly, like some real fucking pungent cigars maybe. He wouldn’t have thought her a chimney to look at her, as she neatly brushes chin-length black hair out of her eyes to put her glasses on, then turns her face up to him with a smile.

 “Thank you, sir!”

 Anything Zoro was going to say dies in his throat.

 She says something else, probably, but he doesn’t hear a damn thing.

  _Kuina._

 This woman has _Kuina’s face._

 

~

 

  _They aren’t really sparring, when it happens, just bickering playfully over which one of them will become the World’s Greatest. Zoro doesn’t remember the last time before coming here that he fought for any reason than pouring the necessary blood, sweat, and tears into his dream, but Kuina sometimes makes him forget about monstrous ambitions._

_She was mocking him by acting like she’d already won the title – not that stupid fake confidence, finally, but with real pride – and she put her nose so high in the air while strutting about that she tripped over a rock._

_It looked so fucking stupid, so Zoro laughed at her._

_For that, Kuina pushed him into a mud puddle and then dove in after him. They’re too tired for a third spar today, a real one, but not too tired to mess around and whack at each other a bit._

_“When I’m the World’s Greatest, you can be my servant!” Kuina declares, her wide smile white against the mud turning them both dark brown. “I’ll need someone to carry my things! You can even carry two bags in each hand and one in your mouth!”_

_Zoro is grinning just as widely, yanking at Kuina’s arms to wrestle her weapon out of her hands. “Oh, yeah? If I do, it’ll only be because you’re not strong enough to carry your own bags!”_

_“Get real!” Kuina shrieks, sending them spinning the other way, trying to get loose._

_“‘Oh, if only there was a big, strong man around to carry my things!’ That’s you” Zoro says, in a high-pitched voice that isn’t really girly at all. “‘My weak, girly arms can’t-!’” Zoro doesn’t finish, too busy cackling while ducking the elbow coming at his face._

_“What’s that stupid voice supposed to be, Roronoa Zoro~? I’ll show you girly arms!”_

_Thank fuck that they’ve got the softer wooden practice swords right now, one each, because Zoro can almost hear Kuina’s dad’s potential heart attack if they tried this with actual blades. Wadou is sitting off to the side, by Zoro’s three lesser swords. They’re going to be so bruised up tomorrow and Koshiro is probably going to pinch his nose at them, but that’s nothing new and neither of them care to stop. So long as Kuina’s still going, Zoro can’t possibly stop._

_The sunset has washed the world gold around them and simple fun sets it aglow. They’re grabbing at each other’s clothing, shoving, swinging their swords, spinning wildly together, laughing and growling and roaring like little beasts. Neither of them can keep steady without leaning on the other, their feet slipping every which way._

_Zoro, who never knew so many things until he met Kuina, almost has the thought that he could probably do this forever, if someone would let him spend his life on this._

_He guesses later that it could have looked like dancing._

_Because the next thing he knows, he’s caught Kuina’s hand and golden light is everywhere. All the laughter and warmth of them comes together, at the end of their wild twisting, as they fall over and into each other._

_Then they’re clutching their stomach on the ground, still gasping with laughter, and wipe a tear away from their eye, leaving even more mud across their cheek. It’s when they look at their hand that they realize something is different. Their hand is too large and their fingers too long, and they’re holding one practice sword in each hand now._

_There’s a freckle on one wrist that’s both unfamiliar and not, and a small scar on the other hand that’s both familiar and not. It both is and isn’t the back of the hands they know._

_They look down at themselves and slowly, wobblingly, pick themselves out of the damn mud. They’re taller and broader, heavier and steadier. They feel stronger, when they experimentally swing one of their two wooden weapons, and they look and feel over their limbs carefully. Two arms… two legs… longer and thicker than before, but no more than usual. When they raise their fingers to their bowed face, they feel over their broad jaw for one mouth… their long face for one nose… for their two ears… and their two eyes._

_When their mud-slicked fingers move up into their hair, they find that one side of their head is nearly shaved, but the other side is chin-length. They pull dark green bangs into view and, after a second of final realization, gasp like they’ve been stabbed through the chest._

_They aren’t Zoro and Kuina anymore._

_“Oh,” they say, in a voice deeper than they’re used to._

_Two people have somehow become… one person, born with their swords in hand, except they aren’t one person either. They’re something else. They’re something_ more. _They’re not a half-of-Kuina and half-of-Zoro mix of each other, some parts discarded to fit together, but rather everything of the both of them all at once. They’re the best of them and the worst of them, come together under one dream._

_They don’t know what’s happened to them exactly, or when or why or how it’s happened, but there are three things they immediately know for certain about themselves:_

_Their name is Zokuina._

_They are the one who will become the World’s Greatest Swordsman._

_And they are_ perfect.

 

~

 

 Zoro is no damn coward. He has never in his life run from any fight, but in the face of this… of this face… he turns on his heel without another word. He quickly leaves this woman and her haunting behind him. But even the sound of his fucking footsteps seem to echo his spinning thoughts, each uncompromisingly inescapable: _Kuina is alive? Kuina is alive? Kuina is alive?_

 It can’t be Kuina, who was buried so beloved so painfully long ago. There wasn’t any light of recognition for him in that woman’s eyes. There weren’t any golden sparks when they touched. She’s just a stranger who happens to look and fight much like the most important person to ever fucking happen to Roronoa Zoro.

 Maybe he’s just losing his damn mind. He barely saw that woman swing her shitty sword; he doesn’t really know if she fights like Kuina. The resemblance was freakish – not so much striking as stabbing straight through him – but it’s been years. Kuina died so young, with her life not even half-lived, while that woman is an adult grown. Kuina’s jaw was never so broad, her face and limbs never so long, and her back never so damn tall.

 But _Zokuina’s_ was, so that’s not actually any fucking better.

 At least there are the shitty dork glasses. Those are different. Those are new.

 Damn it! It’s probably because of everything that’s happened recently – joining up with people with mad dreams, challenging that monster Mihawk, swearing foolish promises to people, and having to up with all these damn _fusions_ everywhere. Kuina and fusion have been at the bow of his mind since Luffy made that stupid fucking offer the first time.

 Zoro has been thinking almost nonstop about how important it is that he show how he’s strong enough for two people, now that he’s carrying the last pieces of Kuina with him. He’s been thinking how stupid it is to trust someone you barely know, to throw everything you have together into the unknown, as opposed to someone you can at least share everything with without reservation. He’s been thinking about how he’s not going to fucking fuse and share the title of World’s Greatest Swordsman with anyone else. If he can’t take up the title with or beside Kuina, then he has to do it alone for the both of them.

 Only one can stand at the top now. It has to be him. Kuina only wanted it for one of them anyway – no fusion – one victor, alone.

 It’s the only thing that makes sense: he’s gone mad. Luffy has been throwing out wild, all-too-fucking-tempting offers of something he left far behind him long ago, but Zoro never wants to be that damn weak again. He was a fool of a boy, rushing into something he didn’t understand.

 Of course a woman with Kuina’s face shows up now to mock him. Fucking hell.

  _Kuina is alive? Kuina is alive? Kuina is alive?_

 No, she’s dead. Zoro forever carries a piece of her, in Wadou and the part of him that remembers being Zokuina, but she’s dead and she’s not coming back. They’re both dead. He promised Kuina, at her grave, that his name would become famous enough to reach even the heavens – all on his own, exactly as she had wanted to do, no matter how strong Zokuina was.

 Zoro’s dislike of fusion isn’t twofold, it’s _threefold._ Because Zoro does everything in threes, if he can – the best of numbers. The third reason is just no one’s damn business, shitty cook who says Zoro hasn’t done something he’s tried more times than he can count, fuck you very fucking much.

 God, he can’t fucking breathe.

 Zoro turns a corner and collapse back against the wall of an alley, one hand tight around Wadou Ichimonji’s hilt and the other clutching at his still bandaged, newly agonized chest. _He can’t fucking breathe._ It feels like he’s dying. Is he dying? He’s not unused to pain, but this isn’t so much clearing his mind as flooding him.

 He hasn’t felt like this since he stood at Kuina’s grave and sobbed himself dry of tears for the rest of his life. Koshiro, Kuina’s father, had to pick him off the ground. How can it hurt like that again now?

  _That piece is dead,_ Zoro thinks desperately, holding Wadou against his wound. _It’s been dead for years. It shouldn’t be able to hurt anymore._

 The first reason fusion is stupid? It’s so fucking stupid to trust people like that. Everyone out here is a pirate or a marine or some form of complete fucking bastard.

 The village where Kuina lived was a special place, not only because she was there, but because it was kept quiet and peaceful under her father’s mindful guard. Zoro fought Kuina hundreds of times, spent thousands of hours in her company – training, doing chores, arguing about their dream, doing everything and nothing – before Zokuina accidentally happened. Like a fool, Zoro decided to forget everything he knew about an untrustworthy world and rely on Kuina. And even she let him fall down in the end, by dying on him.

 The second reason fusion is stupid? Trusting in fusion alone to make you strong, without bringing everything you can to it, will make you weak and your fusion weak too. Zoro is going to take that title by his own merit and sacrifice, his own blood and sweat and tears, and no one else’s. What’s the point to his promise otherwise?

 The third reason fusion is so fucking stupid?

 If there’s anything worse than being a fool, it’s being an unlucky one. Fate might love her fools, but sometimes she just lets them fucking fall. The sea never did care if a sailor loved her.

 If there’s anything worse than tearing yourself open to let someone else inside, than letting someone else slice open your chest to reach through your ribs and into your heart, so that you can stitch your open wound to theirs… it’s losing that someone else. Then you’ve just got an open fucking wound in your chest. Blood everywhere. Forever. Nothing to be fucking done about it.

 If Luffy and his brother want to let someone pretty much punch a hole through their chests, even after losing another brother, that’s their fucking business. Zoro can’t fucking do that again.

 He doesn’t need anyone. He never damn did.

 

~

 

  _It’s quiet at the dojo too, even though the new day is sure in the blue sky above and they should have just begun morning drills. The yard is empty, the equipment untouched, and Zoro prowls through the silence suspiciously. Did they all go on a trip somewhere? Without him? Jerks._

_Zoro perks up at the sound of familiar voices nearby, speaking in hushed tones._

_“Heavens, Koshiro, are you alright?”_

_“I’m… I’ll live, but… but K-” Zoro’s teacher’s voice breaks on something like a sob._

_“There’s nothing you could have done,” the assistant teacher says quickly. “There’s nothing anyone could have done against something like that. It’s just… it’s just bad luck. It’s the worst misfortunate. Heavens, I’m so sorry, Koshiro. I can’t imagine how you feel right now.”_

_“Neither can I.”_

_“…I’ve… I’ve sent all the students home for the day… or to their rooms.”_

_“Good. That’s… good.”_

_“I haven’t been able to find that boy, though.”_

_“Zoro? He and… he and my daughter would train early every morning… and spar in the evenings too. They’re such faithful friends, you know; they share a dream. I think he was good for K-” Zoro’s teacher’s voice breaks again. “She wouldn’t have… He’ll have missed her… I have to tell him…”_

_“Tell me what?” Zoro demands._

_He gives up on eavesdropping and steps around the corner, confronting his long-faced teacher and one of the interchangeable assistants of the dojo. Zoro didn’t like training by himself this morning, but he doesn’t like having to work out half-spoken conversations either. He hates dull waiting and unnecessary worrying, and he refuses to go through it again._

_Zoro stops, abruptly, arrested by something dreadful. His put-together, ever-patient teacher looks like a wreck. Koshiro’s expression twists into something even worse after he swallows his surprise._

_“Zoro, I… Good morning.”_

_Zoro squints at the man. If all good mornings sounded like that, people could improve their day by flinging themselves off the nearest damn cliff._

_The assistant teacher tries to slip away silently, but Zoro catches their heavy feet. As the man leaves, Zoro also catches sight of a familiar blade leaning against the wall: it’s Wadou Ichimonji. Zoro would know that sword anywhere, even thought he’s almost never seen Wadou without its owner. He’s felt Wadou in Zokuina’s grip enough times that he’d know the sword blind._

_But he’s never seen Wadou more than ten feet from Kuina, unless she was on the field or out in the yard wielding a wooden sword instead, and then the sword always sat in its proper place. All the gods and devils out there couldn’t help any unworthy fool who moved Wadou Ichimonji from wherever its owner had set it last._

_And Zoro’s never seen Wadou left alone in this room before._

 

~

 

Some dumbass sees Zoro sitting with his head between his knees in an alleyway and decides that this makes Zoro the perfect target for a mugging. Crime like that is more common in big towns. It immediately puts Zoro in a much better mood.

 He leaves the world’s unluckiest mugger behind him in the alleyway, slumped against the wall, shaking out his fists and determined to find this impossible-to-locate sword shop. He wants to get the fuck out of this shitty, smoky city as fast as the Going Merry can carry him. He’ll never have to risk seeing the woman with Kuina’s face – the woman with nearly _Zokuina’s_ face – again.

 Loguetown can kiss his ass.

 

~

 

  _The sun sets and the stars come out, but Zokuina doesn’t care. They’ve fused purposefully this time, after a week of indecision, and they’re going to test their strength. They need to find the end of the power of two people coming together, and so far golden Zokuina’s strength seems limitless._

_Zokuina is faster, sharper, more solid, and more graceful. Zokuina is immoveable and unstoppable. They feel like they could conquer the whole damn world like this – together._

_Fusion isn’t something either Zoro or Kuina considered before. They have never truly seen it or faced it, or even taken much interest in stories of such a thing – but fusion feels a long time coming and as easy as breathing nevertheless. The real strangeness is that Zokuina didn’t happen any sooner. They’re perfect, after all._

_Zokuina’s long legs beat against the ground as they run and run, their broad chest heaving even though even breathing seems easier. Has the air always smelled so sweet here?_

_They’ve never felt like this before._

_Fusion seems like the answer to all their stupid problems. It doesn’t have to be just one of them at the top now, but rather the two of them as one. One of them won’t be left out in the cold like a fool when it comes time to achieve their dream, because like this there_ can _be two people as the World’s Greatest Swordsman. As Zokuina, they’re more than strong enough to get there._

 _Never has Zokuina felt so tall, so strong, or so brave. It’s another damn lightning-strike moment:_ I want this. This is everything I have ever wanted. I want this more than anything for the rest of my life.

  _Even the night has turned golden around them, and the world looks so much simpler for it._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to hint at this "twist" from the beginning of the fic, but idk how obvious it was. Zoro is probably a really odd choice to explore a Fusion AU with, but I really wanted to investigate how loving and losing Kuina could have changed him. If Zoro is so "fusion is for weaklings and cowards", then _why_ might he be like that? He definitely doesn't have to have fused with Kuina to be like that, it works fine without a Zokuina fusion, but that's the direction I went for this story. 
> 
> Headcanon that basically everyone and everything around Smoker for extended periods of time just ends up smelling like smoke. Everyone who hasn't met Captain Smoker: "Whoa, Tashigi! Lay off the cigars!" Tashigi: >8(


	9. Loguetown II

 

_Their fusion is never accidental again, but… they let themselves fall into Zokuina without planning or talking about it again. And again. And again. It’s just too easy to let themselves be together._

_After all, Zokuina is bigger and better in every way. Everything makes so much more sense... and the things that still don’t make sense are so much less daunting. It feels like Zoro never doesn’t know where he stands, when he stands as part of Zokuina. He’s never lost. They know exactly where they are and exactly where they’re going: right to the top._

 

~

 

Zoro finds the shitty sword shop. It’s not as shit as it could be, but the owner is stingy and smarmy by turns. First, he’s looking down his nose at Zoro’s limited funds, then he’s falling over himself to offer Zoro some sort of “deal” for Wadou Ichimonji. Like Zoro’s a fucking moron and like he’d ever give up Kuina’s sword for fucking anything.

 They couldn’t take Kuina’s sword off his cold, dead body.

 Just as he’s thinking this, the shop door opens and Zoro catches a whiff of smoke as his only warning. Suddenly the woman with Kuina’s face is there. (Seriously, is she a hardcore cigar person or what? He’d never guess it, but what the fuck does he know about smoking?) She leaps to his rescue immediately, armed with a little book of swords and an enormous amount of righteous disbelief.

 Zoro didn’t fucking ask for a rescue, thanks, but he’s insulted enough on behalf of Kuina’s sword to let the woman scold the owner like he’s a misbehaving child anyway. He didn’t know that Wadou Ichimonji was some famous Masterwork, though he’s always known it to be a damn fine sword.

 This woman still looks too damn much like Kuina, but Zoro’s put enough distance between him and his surprise to better see the differences now. It’s not just the dork glasses. Kuina liked this nerd shit too – she probably tried to tell him about Wadou Ichimonji’s provenance at least once – but she wasn’t such a bright-eyed dork about it, he’s pretty sure.

 Kuina’s dream had her out for only herself – a far cry from this woman’s weird ambition to take swords back from pirates and criminals, like that has any bearing on a person’s skills as a swordsman. Kuina was also a cocky little shit, as opposed to this woman’s modesty and friendliness. This woman doesn’t seem to have Kuina’s annoying self-depreciation either. This face-stealing woman doesn’t have Kuina’s cool façade, but there’s still a line of steel in this grown woman’s spine that the little girl Zoro loved never got the chance to temper.

 This woman isn’t Kuina.

 The physical resemblance is still killer, though, and Zoro fucking hates it. Like, get your own fucking face? Why does this woman even have to have hair like Kuina’s? That’s still bullshit.

 

 ~

 

  _“I don’t think we should fuse anymore,” Kuina says finally._

_They’re sprawled over the grass in the spot. The hour is late and the moon is thin. Their training stretched on too long and they’re going to be so grumpy in the morning, but to Zoro it all felt worth it. When Kuina’s words sink in, though, the golden warmth that kept the night so bright leeches away all too suddenly._

_He looks at her blankly. “…What?”_

_“What’ll people say about us? If we follow our dream as a fusion?” Kuina blurts, and sits bolt upright, as though her own doubt stung her. “What’ll people say about us if we fuse into Zokuina all the time to fight?”_

_Zoro sits up too. They never said they were going to fuse_ all _the time and didn’t they cover this already? Aren’t they over this yet?_

_“Who gives a shit what other people think?”_

_“But they’ll say we’re weak! They’re say that we’re cowards and weaklings, Zoro! They’ll say that we’re not good enough to make it on our own, so we have to cheat to fight!”_

_“We’re not cheating just because we have each other!”_

_“People will say we are!” Kuina shouts._

_“WHO CARES?!” Zoro bellows in her face. “I’ve never given a shit what other people think about my life or my dream before, and I’m not going to start now!”_

_“That’s a lie and you know it!”_

_“They can call us idiots when they beat us and not before, stupid!”_

_“Don’t call me stupid, stupid!”_

_Kuina tackles him and they go rolling over the grass. They’re no familiar golden light this time – which has surrounded them maybe hundreds of times as time has gone by – just limbs knocking hideously together as they try to smash each other into the ground. Kuina manages to put him in a headlock and sits on him while he struggles._

_“Don’t you see, Zoro?! It’s like admitting that we couldn’t do it alone! What if we fuse into Zokuina so much that we_ can’t _fight on our own anymore?! What if we stop trying to get better on our own because we’re relying on a stupid fusion all the time?!”_

_Zoro shoves her off and rolls over, and stops abruptly, just before pouncing. Kuina’s face is dribbling tears and snot. She drops to her knees in front of him and sobs, and Zoro can only sit and watch her with wide eyes. He doesn’t understand Kuina and maybe he never has. He thought Zokuina was perfect._

_“It’s like saying I can’t do it on my own!” Kuina wails. “Like I can’t be just as strong as anyone else! Like I need to fuse with a_ boy _to become the World’s Greatest Swordsman! Like a girl can’t do it on her own! It’s not called the World’s Greatest Swords_ men!”

  _It’s true. It’s not called that._

_Kuina looks him dead in the eye. “Do you want them to call you a coward, Roronoa Zoro?”_

_“…No.”_

_That’s the last thing he wants. Maybe she’s got a point._

_“But we don’t have to stop being Zokuina to fight our own battles,” Zoro argues, because they shouldn’t have to stop. “We can be strong apart and fight by ourselves for our dream, and then we’ll be even stronger together when we have to be. We don’t have to never be Zokuina again to be strong on our own.”_

_Kuina sniffles. “I don’t want any strength that I didn’t work for on my own.”_

_Zoro doesn’t understand what that means. Isn’t being Zokuina work? Doesn’t it teach her too?_

_While Zoro struggles for words, Kuina adds, “Dad says fusion is dangerous – people rely on it too much or get stabbed in the back or can’t work together. I don’t want to be called a weakling. The girl who couldn’t do it on her own. Do you want them to call you a weakling too, when you can’t beat me without fusing with someone else?”_

_Zoro recoils in horror. “I’m_ never _going to fuse with someone else!”_

 _There’s no point in beating Kuina if he doesn’t do it on his own. Fusion_ would _be a cheap trick. Zoro can win all his fights on his own if he wants to._

_“I don’t need to fuse with anyone to kick your ass! I’ll become the World’s Greatest Swordsman and show you just how strong I am on my own!”_

_Kuina laughs wetly and teases, “So uncool, Zoro! Come on, then!”_

 

~

  
 Zoro turns around and takes up the only decent sword in the cheap bin, since the smarmy owner doesn’t think much of the amount of money Nami lent him. He wants his damn swords and then to put smoky Loguetown behind him for the rest of his life.

 But as soon as he picks the sword out of the barrel, the shop owner and the woman with Kuina’s face fall over themselves to tell him three things. Firstly, that the sword’s name is Sandai Kitetsu. Secondly, that it’s another lesser Masterwork sword. Thirdly, that it’s cursed. Like Zoro can’t tell a cursed sword when he sees one; like Zoro can’t fucking tell a cursed sword when he _holds_ one. Really, what kind of fool do these two take him for?

 He holds Sandai Kitetsu up to his face and looks himself in the eye.

 Zoro carries Kuina with him in Wadou Ichimonji. This sword is nothing like hers.

 Yeah, sure, this blade is cursed as surely as the sky is blue, but there’s something about this sword that feels right. This is a sword that’ll raise fucking hell at working with any other, but it still feels right to him. If Wadou Ichimonji is the sword for a fool with a dream, then this sharp, seething piece of work feels like the sword for a demon on a mission. Sandai Kitetsu feels like _him._ Not like Kuina. Not even like _Zokuina._ Just him: Roronoa Zoro, the monstrous pirate hunter turned demonic pirate, the man who will now alone become the World’s Greatest Swordsman, even if he has to gut his own goddamn captain to get there.

 This sword would probably cut open his fucking chest itself if it was given the chance. Zoro shifts the blade and in its gleam, he can almost see the light that had entered Mihawk’s haunting eyes during their fight. He can almost see that not-so-immoveable monster’s surprised smile.

 This woman with Kuina’s face wants to talk about criminals who make their swords cry with their wicked deeds, but Zoro thinks that a truly suffering sword is one that’s starving for a real fight.

 He decides to take his chances: his luck against Sandai Kitetsu’s curse.

 The expressions of the shop owner and the smoky woman at this are pretty fucking funny; one of them even screams as Zoro holds out his arm and tosses the sword into the air to fall where it may. They really do think he’s a complete fucking idiot. While Zoro is unquestionably a fool, he knows how to throw a damn sword. Yeah, he’s a bit out of practice as a knife-thrower, since he’s a fucking swordsman and not a sideshow performer, but he’s still good enough for any damn circus.

 Sandai Kitetsu’s cursed blade doesn’t so much as scratch his arm, spinning bloodlessly around before embedding itself in the floor.

 Zoro looks at the sword with a triumphant grin.

  _That’s right, you evil piece of shit,_ he thinks. _I’m your only ticket out of here into a real fight again and you fucking know it. You’re fucking starving. Stick with me all the way to the top and I’ll give you all the goddamn blood you could ever want._

 

~

 

_When everything is over, Zoro is alone._

_He has too much to say that he can’t now. He couldn’t say anything with an audience. None of the other students of the dojo or any of the teachers, even Kuina’s father, knew her like he did. None of them even knew about Zokuina. But Zoro had seen every face of his friend – from her cocky swagger to that biting doubt, from that begrudging kindness to that laughing wildness, and all her hopes and fears._

_Did he know Kuina, though?_

_The loops of Kuina’s mind had twisted away from him again, as Zokuina became less frequent, much to Kuina’s amusement. Zokuina had become a sort of fleeting prize, a brief indulgence, or an unspoken reward of their dream. And even Zokuina had secrets._

_Had Kuina thought_ him _a weakling for wanting to be Zokuina? Had she thought him a coward for not wanting to face the world – not his fights, but the wider world – on his own? Had she thought him a cheater for rushing after what seemed like the easiest path to their dream? Had she thought him a fool?_

_The tears run like they never have before, like rivers to the sea, unbidden and unstoppable. Zoro stands in front of his best friend’s grave and tells himself that she thought he could do it, long before they even knew about Zokuina. Fusion is for people too weak to make it on their own and Zoro will never be that fucking weak – he’ll be strong enough for any two people all on his own. With Wadou Ichimonji in hand, he swears it to the sky and the sea and every fool with a dream._

_“I’ll become even stronger for her sake! I swear that I’ll become the World’s Greatest Swordsman, WHOSE NAME IS FAMOUS ENOUGH TO REACH EVEN THE HEAVENS!”_

 

~

 

 “As they say… the sword chooses the owner…”

 Zoro’s contest with Sandai Kitetsu impresses the smarmy shop owner so damn much that the man offers him a second sword, not on display, also free of charge. This sword’s name is Yubashiri, another lesser Masterwork blade. It’s probably the best on the island, next to Wadou and Sandai, and it’s not got any burdensome past or bloody curse clinging to it so far as Zoro can tell.

 Its most noticeable trait is maybe that it’s not the sort of blade that’ll balk at working with others, unlike proud Wadou Ichimonji and hungry Sandai Kitetsu. Yubashiri is a steady thing, with a keen edge and light yet solid weight. Yubashiri feels like the loyal, honourable sort of sword that should belong to this woman with Kuina’s face.

 Well, Zoro’s never really been one to say no to free shit unless it’s crap. It’ll do.

 He straps his new weapons to his waist, then nods at the shop owner and the smoky woman. The woman tries to speak with him again, maybe a goodbye or maybe fishing for an introduction, but Zoro doesn’t even look at her. He doesn’t know if he’d be able to resist reaching forward to see if her damn face tears off.

 “You should smoke less,” he says instead, wrinkling his nose. “Lay off the cigars. You reek.”

 “I _beg your pardon-?!”_

 Zoro leaves without listening to her outrage.

 He catches a changed scent on the town, when he steps out of the shop, and so takes a deeper sniff. The wind’s picked up. Zoro looks up at the sky dubiously, where fluffy white clouds are rolling in quickly across an otherwise blue sky. Hmm. Today’s a weird fucking day all around, it seems.

 He should go find Luffy and make sure that his captain hasn’t gotten kidnapped by another clown or something. Zoro’s captain wanted to see the Pirate King’s execution platform or stand or whatever, right? Yeah, that sort of excitable madness sounds exactly like Monkey D. Luffy, so it’s got to be right. Sounds like trouble too, which’ll give him a chance to test his new swords.

 Zoro sets forward a brisk pace. If this direction just so happens to be away from his past too, it doesn’t fucking mean he’s running from it.

 

~

 

  _Zoro feels like he could and should walk across the water to meet the monster ahead of him. Just step off the Baratie railing and into the Don Krieg armada wreckage, and stride across the surface of the sea. He can’t find it in him to break gazes with the dream he’s been dying after for so long._

Kuina should be here, _some part of him thinks, as he brandishes her sword against the World’s Greatest Swordsman._ Kuina should be a part of this.

  _For all the blood, sweat, and tears that he’s paid to his promise, Zoro’s grace still doesn’t nearly match that of this man. Hawk-Eyes is so close and still so high above his reach, unless he leaps with everything he has. If Kuina was here, she’d probably tell him as much and call him stupid._

_Zokuina might have reached higher, but Zokuina is half-dead and all gone._

_It’s just him and he can’t lose._

 

~

 

 Zoro finds the square where the Pirate King was killed, and even manages to meet up with Nami, Usopp, and the shitty cook at the edge of the huge crowds inside the town centre. The stink of smoke is somehow worse here, despite the new wind that’s bringing in the thickening, darkening clouds circling high above, but Zoro is glad to see some less haunting familiar faces.

 Now all they have to do is find their captain and get the hell out of h-

 Usopp freezes and stares far ahead with widening eyes. Stammering nonsense, their sniper raises a trembling finger, and they all follow his line of sight, up and straight ahead.

 “Is that…?” Sanji wonders.

 “It _is,”_ Nami groans.

 Zoro’s jaw drops open, Sanji drops his cigarette, and Nami drops her head into her hands.

 “WHY IS HE ON THE EXECUTION STAND?!” Usopp shrieks.

 Because, of course, Luffy hasn’t just come to see the execution platform, he’s _on_ the execution platform, where everyone and their damn dog can see him. Which’d be fine, actually, even funny, if that was the end of it. Except Luffy isn’t just _on_ the execution platform, he’s _locked up_ in some damn stocks up there, like he plans on following the Pirate King in all respects.

 Even fucking worse: someone is holding a _sword over his head_ right now.

 And that someone is a fucking clown.

 “Luffy’s gotten himself kidnapped by a clown again,” Zoro says disbelievingly.

 “…What?” Sanji says.

 Zoro ignores the shitty cook, because how the hell did Luffy manage to find _another_ clown that wants to kill him in this town? How the _fuck?_ Is Luffy just a murder clown magnet? What goddamn pirate circus are these killer clowns even coming from?!

 This new clown is even a fucking _imperfect fusion._ They’re extremely long and skinny, maybe eight or even nine feet tall, with a flashy, feminine pose and long, dark blue hair. They’ve got four arms, one with a heavy club and one with the sword hanging over Luffy’s neck, and three eyes all made enormous by their bright clown makeup. If the giant red clown nose and the huge white pirate hat didn’t make them easy to spot, Zoro couldn’t have missed their triumphant, high-pitched cackling ringing through the centre square.

  _“GYAHAHAHAHA!”_

 Nami growls in frustration. “Right. Zoro, Sanji, you two go save that dumbass before he gets his head chopped off! Usopp and I’ll take the supplies back to the Merry and prepare to cast off before this massive storm rolls in. It could trap us here, so hurry back as soon as possible!”

 “Wh-wh-what _storm?”_

 “Yes, Nami-swan~! Nothing could keep me away~!”

 “Whatever,” Zoro says, as he draws his swords, because he was going to fucking do that anyway.

 And then a shout rings through Loguetown.

 It’s just a shout, but somehow it has all the qualities of the crack of lightning and roll of thunder.

  **“I’M THE MAN…”**

 Familiar and unmistakable and almost furious, cresting and falling like a wave.

  **“…WHO’LL BECOME THE PIRATE KING!”**

 It’s Luffy, of course. Who else has a dream so foolish? Who else could be that fucking loud?

 Luffy’s shout from the execution stand carries through the square with impossible clarity, such that Zoro wouldn’t be surprised if it was tangible through all of Loguetown. It seems even louder in the dead silence that follows it in the few seconds afterwards. All the people here, hundreds of them, heard Luffy’s declaration like he was screaming in their ear.

 And hundreds of witnesses stare up at him in trembling disbelief.

 “…L-Luffy…” Usopp says.

 Zoro almost grins. “Now _that’s_ conviction.”

 The shitty cook snorts. “It’s ballsy, I’ll give you that.”

 “That moron!” Nami cries. “The Marines are here! Come on, Usopp, let’s go!”

 Usopp and Nami go tearing off at impressive speed – the legs of people used to running the fuck away from every fight, Zoro supposes – as the ripples begin to go through the crowd around them. The people respond to Luffy’s promise with shocked laughter and terrified incredulity.

  _“Did he just say… the Pirate King…?”_

_“What’s he even doing up there… saying something like that in this town of all places?!”_

_“What a fool!”_

 The fusion clown on the execution platform doesn’t look pleased by Luffy’s words, stomping down on the stocks holding Luffy with a high-heeled boot. That sword could come down at any minute, if that fusion decides to be the sort of coward who kills a helpless opponent. Zoro and Sanji look at each other and then tear forward bringing hell on their heels.

 “HEY, YOU! WAIT A FUCKING SECOND!” Sanji shouts.

 It gets the clown’s attention and Luffy’s too. Luffy beams across the crowd currently diving out of Zoro and Sanji’s thundering way. People scream not to be caught between the pirates’ clash.

 “Hey, Sanji! Hey, Zoro! Come help me out of here!”

 “STOP GETTING KIDNAPPED BY CLOWNS, YOU MORON!” Zoro shouts back.

 “I didn’t _mean-”_

 “SO, YOU’VE COME TO STOP OUR FLASHY AND MOST BEAUTIFUL EXECUTION, RORONOA ZORO?!” the clown fusion yells gleefully. “HOW KNIGHTLY! BUT FAR TOO LATE!”

 “SHUT UP! I DON’T EVEN KNOW YOU!”

 The clown fusion gasps, and throws up a hand against their forehead and another against their mouth, as though suffering a personal raincloud. They’ve still got their club and their sword in their other set of arms, though. Zoro ignores their flashy upset and puts Wadou's hilt into his mouth, because the parting crowd is revealing a supporting pirate crew around the base of the execution platform that’s going to have to come down.

 “HOW RUDE! TAKE CARE OF THEM, BOYS!” the clown fusion cries.

 The pirate crew below looks like a bunch of clowns too – do clowns travel in fucking packs or something – and charge to meet Zoro and Sanji with an agreeable roar.

 Zoro and Sanji go through them. Weaklings.

 “Move it, cakeface!” the shitty cook growls, before introducing his shoe to someone’s head. He spins to give another pirate permanent internal damage probably, and yells, “Hey, mosshead! Is this the fucking clown?!”

 “Diff’ren’ clow’,” Zoro answers, through his sword.

 Something about the clown’s crew looks real fucking familiar, though he can’t quite place the cannon fodder. He never can. It might just be the clown theme again.

 “Different-? _Different_ clown?” Sanji repeats.

 “‘iff one new.”

 “…What the fuck,” Sanji says, before he kicks a pirate across the entire fucking square.

  _Crack!_

 “Y’ah.”

 Zoro’s not quite used to these new swords yet, but damn if he’ll be outdone by the shitty cook and so far he’s really fucking liking them. Yeah, yeah, this could work for him. Wadou is a sword he likes to have in his mouth; he definitely doesn’t want to put Sandai’s curse in his mouth and Yubashiri’s light weight seems well-suited opposite so far. Sandai Kitetsu definitely seems happier tearing pirates open from his hand.

 But no matter how quickly Zoro’s swords tear through the clown’s cannon fodder and no matter how many the shitty cook takes out at his side… they’re not clearing the square fast enough.

 That damn clown fusion is already up there with Luffy, already has a sword above their captain’s neck, and has been there since the beginning. Zoro still isn’t fast enough, isn’t strong enough, to cut through like the typhoon he needs to be if the executioner decides to let their blade fall now.

  _Zokuina might’ve been fast enough,_ he thinks, against his will and all his common damn sense.

 No. _Fuck,_ no.

 Zokuina is half-dead and all gone. Zoro is stronger by himself now than that fusion ever was. Zokuina was the fusion of two kids who didn’t and never really knew what the fuck they were doing; so, no, Zokuina would not be fucking fast enough. Not a damn chance.

 But whatever fusion Zoro could make with Sanji might be.

 This is the second time Zoro has been in this situation and he fucking hates it even more than he hated it the first time against Arlong. Again, it’s not Zoro’s pride as a swordsman on the line here, it’s Luffy’s life. The shitty cook alone is stronger now than Zokuina ever was. If Luffy and _Usopp_ could make it work over a shared goal, then why couldn’t Zoro and Sanji spin together and deal out a storm of super-powered blows?

 Zoro has never explicitly sworn off fusion since Kuina’s death, though it’s pretty damn close, and now he has to ask himself if his dislike matters more to him than his captain’s life. Would he fuse with Sanji to save Luffy? It broils his stomach to even imagine proposing the idea, but _would he?_

 It’s a stupid idea. It’s such a foolish fucking idea and it’s all Luffy’s fault for making Zoro think such foolish things. Zoro and the shitty cook would undoubtedly make an imperfect fusion – they barely fucking know each other and neither of them really _like_ what they know – so who fucking knows what number of legs they’d even end up with. Who wants to have to figure out how to walk again in the middle of a wild fight? They might share a goal, but Zoro has never fused outside of a shared dream.

 But would he?”

  _“Gyahahahahaha!”_ the clown fusion shrieks. Their weapons steady in one set of hands, they throw the remaining two arms high into the air, and their long coat whips around them in the rising wind. “Just you watch the _fairest captain of all_ finish their revenge from there, boys! Witness the last moments of your precious captain and despair!”

 Zoro spins, he cuts, he slashes, and he blows all these damn pirates away from him. Sandai Kitetsu’s appetite might be impossible to ever sate, but the sword can’t have any complains about starvation now.

 It’s still not enough.

 “BASTARD!” Sanji yells up at the fusion, fighting like a whirlwind himself, his shoe cracking the stones under his feet. “YOU SHITTY BASTARD! COME DOWN HERE AND _FIGHT ME,_ YOU COWARDLY PIECE OF SHIT!”

 What the asshole said.

  _Is it weak to need someone else to be strong sometimes?_ They’re so _close._ Maybe, just maybe, they’ll make it in time. Zoro won’t need to spit out his sword and spit out those damn words. He’s strong enough for any two people, isn’t he? He’s not that weak. _He’s not that weak._

 His wound from Mihawk is burning in his chest. 

“Zoro!”

 Zoro growls. He’s fucking _busy,_ Luffy!

 “Sanji!”

 The clown fusion’s sword goes up. High, high, into the black sky.

 “Nami!”

 The shitty cook freezes to stare in horror at the platform. Zoro is forced to turn on his heel and put Sandai Kitetsu through a pirate aiming to stab his crewmate in the back. What the _fuck_ does Sanji think he’s doing in the middle of a fight?! Wasting time?! Now?!

 “Usopp!”

 What the fuck does _Luffy_ think he’s doing? Zoro looks up too, through the howling wind, against the failing light, to get a better look at his captain than out of the corner of his eye while he fights. What’s happening up there that has their tough-as-shit, unrepentant asshole of a shitty cook so damn wide-eyed like that? What madness is Luffy up to now?

 “Sorry!” Luffy calls down to them, above the rumble. He grins brightly in front of the crowd about to watch him die, as wide and as confident and as wise as a fool. “But it looks like I’m dead!”

 The clown fusion’s sword goes down.

 Oh.

 Luffy’s going to die now.

 He’s going to _die._

 He _can’t-_

 Something wet hits Zoro’s cheek. “What…?!”

 “DON’T SAY THAT, YOU IDIOT!” Sanji screams. “DON’T-!”

 Blinding light erupts overhead, above the square, and then it’s everywhere and Zoro can’t keep his eyes on the execution platform through the flash. Zoro gets thrown back, swept up in a deafening _BOOM_ that goes all through the wound in his chest. The world quakes and burns and shatters. 

Zoro has fought and impressed the World’s Greatest Swordsman, there is no opponent he won’t face and no enemy that he will fear, but there are still some things in nature he really _can’t_ fight.

 It’s a lightning-strike moment. Fucking literally.

 

~

 

  _Hawk-Eyes’ blade…_ Mihawk’s _blade… presses warningly into his chest. Zoro can only stand there, caught, by that pathetic little knife that made him so fucking angry._

_“…Do you wish for me to pierce your heart thus?” Mihawk demands finally, neither pushing forward nor pulling back. He holds them there, immoveable as a mountain even while they rock in the grip of the sea, and asks, “Why do you refuse to step back?”_

_Zoro almost wants to laugh._

_He can’t cry. He sobbed himself dry at a graveside years ago._

_“Beats me. Not really sure why myself,” he answers, “but I get the feeling…”_

_He trails off, but Mihawk waits for him. It’s a far cry from the warlord who couldn’t have given a damn about him or his reasons when he first shouted his challenge. The World’s Greatest Swordsman genuinely wants to know something of him now._

_“I get the feeling that… if I took even one step back right now… I’d lose something very important to me,” Zoro says hoarsely, as he tries to explain why taking advantage of Mihawk’s pitying pause now would be cowardice to him. “There’s a promise… or an oath… or whatever it is… that would be irreversibly broken. I’d never be able to return to where I’m standing right now.”_

_“…Yes,” Mihawk agrees quietly. “Such is defeat.”_

_Zoro takes a shuddering breath. This man’s agreement shouldn’t mean so much._

_He laughs. “Then… that’s why I can’t step back now.”_

_“Even if it means your death…?” Mihawk prompts, pressing the knife ever so slightly forward to make his point._

_If the man had any less grace, Zoro would have been pierced by now._

_He feels stabbed through enough already._

_Even Kuina didn’t ruin him like this._

_“I’d much rather die,” Zoro tells the monster, with all his conviction._

_He might be weak, compared to this demon holding him hostage for the truth, but at least he’s not a coward._

_“Child…” Mihawk says. “Tell me your name.”_

_If it was anyone else calling him a child, Zoro might cut them down to size. Some part of him does bristle, because he’s not a fucking kid, but Dracule Mihawk has shown him the vast distance between them now. To a man like him, Zoro can’t look like much of anything but an inspired child fumbling with swords too big for him._

_“Roronoa Zoro,” he answers._

_“…I shall remember it… for your strength is not oft seen in this world.”_

_Mihawk draws back. He had Zoro completely at his mercy, but he steps away and sheathes his knife instead. To promise to remember him is one kindness, but to spare Zoro’s life is an even greater and stranger kindness, and there is nothing about Mihawk to suggest him a kind man. Perhaps the man’s eyes aren’t so cold now, alight as they are, but they are no less sharp._ _Everything starts making sense again when Mihawk draws that massive sword from his back, and says:_

_"And to pay my respect to you as a fellow swordsman, I shall end this duel with my black sword, the World’s Strongest Sword.”_

_It’s a sign of respect. It’s an honour. It’s a privilege._

_But Zoro doesn’t fucking want to die. If he must die, then he wants to die with honour, as a respected opponent of the greatest of swordsmen, but… he doesn’t want to die. He can’t die. He’s all that’s left of Kuina’s dream… of Kuina… and he wants that stupid fucking dream all for himself too. He wants to live and see it all through._

_He has one chance here. One final blow to counter or die._

_Mihawk raises his sword. God, it’s beautiful._

_“Die,” he says._

_And then the man flies forward, Zoro’s death in hand, too fast to see. In the distance, Zoro can hear Johnny and Yosaku’s fusion screaming, telling him to give up as though that was ever an option, while he waits for his opening._ _Zoro takes his opening as good as blindly, trusting all his skill and instincts._

 “THREE SWORDS STYLE SECRET!”

_It’s not enough._

_Mihawk’s skill is too great and his sword too sharp. This final clash is a fitting end to the meeting of their blades here, and Zoro is laid bare before the monster. With everything he had, he bought himself one more blow, but the next blow will be the true last and the death of him. Nothing to be fucking done about it._

 I've lost. 

_He turns around._

_And sees surprise on the face of the World’s Greatest Swordsman. Maybe that’s to be his final honour and privilege: seeing Dracule Mihawk’s faint confusion. The man could have already laid his new final blow on Zoro. The monster could have struck a second time before it even occurred to Zoro that he’d lost, but instead Mihawk tilts his head and seeks to know Zoro further before he kills him._

_“What…?”_

_Zoro grins at him. His heart is thundering in his throat, it feels like, but he won’t die with a coward’s wound on him._

_Let them call him an idiot or a fool, even a weakling, but never a coward._

_“A wound on one’s back… is the shame of a swordsman.”_

_To Zoro’s surprise, Mihawk’s lips turn up in a smile, wide and wolfish, and his yellow eyes burn._

_“Splendid."_

_And then he delivers that final blow – too fast to see, too sharp to immediately feel, and with all the grace that Zoro has ever wanted. Zoro hears Luffy screaming his name, before he topples backwards into the sea and sinks away._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of borrowing or paraphrasing of canon lines, trying to give them some new perspective. 
> 
> How does Luffy even get into these situations.


	10. Loguetown III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loguetown gets three chapters because three is the best of numbers.

 It’s like someone cracked the sky open and now it’s all spilling out. Blinking flash-spots and raindrops from his eyes, Zoro stands up against the storm descending on Loguetown in heavy sheets – washing the smoke stink and the spilled blood of the square away. He looks at where Luffy was about to die, up into the rumbling, flashing clouds, but Luffy is gone. The execution platform has been destroyed by that massive lightning strike.

 All that’s left is Luffy’s straw hat, being buffeted about by the howling winds. It floats down into the hissing, smouldering wreck that’s been made of the spot where the Pirate King died, and finally hits the stones with a funny wet _slap._

 Beside Zoro, Sanji has also pulled himself to his feet. Good, he’s far too fucking annoying to let a little thing like a lightning storm kill him. The shitty cook’s only got some soot and splinters on his soaked fancy suit. 

Meanwhile the members of the cannon fodder clown crew that were too close have been completely fucking obliterated. Zoro and Sanji might have started this fight, but that force of nature demonstrated that it could’ve finished all their mortal squabbles in one blow.

  _I want to do that,_ some starving part of Zoro thinks, while breathing through the throbbing in his chest. _Someday, I will do that._

 Someone starts giggling.

 It’s Luffy, of course. Who else? Luffy pulls his last stuck hand out of the ruined stocks, nearly hitting himself in the face, and then jumps off the rubble of the execution platform. His clothes look a bit worse for the wear and he’s soaked through, but there’s not a single fucking scratch on him. Luffy picks up his straw hat and slaps in on his head, grinning like the greatest of all fools that he is.

 “Shishishishi! Looks like I survived after all!” Luffy declares. “How lucky!”

 The clown pirates that aren’t drooling on the ground, far enough away from the lightning strike to stand the blast, stare at Luffy in disbelief. The remaining citizens of the crowds, either too stupid or too fascinated to run for their lives already, also stare at Monkey D. Luffy’s miraculous survival.

 Zoro just bows his head and focuses on his swords, struggling for words. Some part of him wants to burst out laughing, because _of course_ Luffy lived – that’s the mad captain fit for a starving demon – that’s the crazy pirate that he chose to follow. Another part of him wants to take Luffy by the shirt and demand, _“What the fuck did you think you were doing? Smiling like that when you were about to die? That wasn’t even a good death, you moron; that’s not what we agreed on!”_

 Zoro swallows all that, though. No one died today.

 Sanji turns to Zoro, now that their captain is free, and Zoro _swears to all the fucking gods and devils out there,_ if Sanji so much as mentions fusion _now,_ he’ll kill the shitty cook on the spot. Zoro is so fucking sick of these offers to fuse. When Zoro decides he wants to do something as thrice-cursed as fusion again, he’ll announce it for everyone to hear. Before then, this shitty cook can shove any offers of fusion up his ass.

 “Hey… do you believe in God?” Sanji says instead.

 Zoro blinks at him.

 Sanji is fiddling with a match, eyeing the destroyed execution platform with mild concern. Zoro will admit that, while he tested his own luck earlier today, whatever Luffy’s got is really… something else. He doesn’t see why they have to bring any damn gods into it, though.

 “Oh, hey, it’s Buggy!” Luffy says.

 Zoro looks over to see his captain leaning over a long body, scratching his head. Buggy the Clown is sprawled over the rubble of the execution stand, dead or dazed, next to the slumped body of a woman with long, dark hair and an enormous white hat. The lightning-strike must have split that clown fusion apart and one of the halves was the same clown after all.

 “Who’s the woman?”

 “I’unno,” Luffy answers, straightening. “I wasn’t listening.”

  _That’s fair,_ Zoro thinks.

 “They were going to _kill you_ and you weren’t even listening to them?” the shitty cook demands incredulously, like that alone is a good reason to listen to some cowardly weakling or smug motherfucker talk their bullshit. “Why did you think they were trying to kill you if you didn’t even know who they were?”

 “Something about pride, I think,” Luffy laughs, “or something else silly!”

 Zoro wants to laugh at the shitty cook’s pained expression – or maybe he wants to laugh because they’re all not dead and no one had to fuse to manage it – but laughter will have to wait for later. Closer than the thunder of the storm above is the thunder of the damn marines putting a perimeter around the square. An officer is shouting for them to corner all the pirates, and the Buggy Pirates are screaming for their captain and scattering in a panic. 

 “Enough talking and let’s leave town already.”

 Sanji grimaces. “Right.”

 Sooner or later he’ll figure out like the rest of them that there’s no understanding Luffy. Their captain only just now seems to notice the new trouble heading their way.

 “Ack! They’re here! Run for it!”

 

~

 

_“What do you think it’s like out there?” Kuina says._

_“Same as it is pretty much everywhere, probably,” Zoro says wisely. Maybe there are some interesting sights out there, but the things that live out there won’t change. “People are shit. They’re violent and stupid and they’d gut you for a handful of gold-”_

_“Sounds like you’d fit right in!”_

_Zoro scowls at her teasing. She’s always teasing him now that she seems to think they’re friends._

_“You can’t trust anyone,” he finishes firmly._

_“What? Yes, you can!”_

_“No, you can’t.”_

_Kuina scoffs. “You’re just grumpy. All people aren’t all crap. Some people are alright.”_

_Zoro rolls his eyes and closes them. The ground is warm and the sun is warmer in their spot, one of the few afternoons they have entirely for themselves. He’s due for a nap. She’s super wrong, no one is worth the risk, but whatever._

Well… _Zoro cracks an eye open and looks at Kuina._ Almost everyone, _he amends._ Maybe.

 

~

 

 They leap the marines’ pathetic attempts at cornering them, leaving the Buggy Pirates to that problem, and bolt down the streets, which’ve been cleared by the marines or the storm or both. They’ve got to get back to the docks or Nami might just take off without them _again._ The wind is getting worse, turning the rain nearly sideways and almost making it difficult to breathe, though no one seems to give a shit about Zoro’s observances now either.

 Luffy and Sanji spend nearly the entire way bickering about whether or not to turn around and take on the persistent marines – that is, when the shitty cook’s not insulting Zoro’s sense of direction and pointing them down a different street instead. Fucking asshole. Ordinarily, Zoro would be on Luffy’s side, arguing for taking on the supposedly “infinite” marines. But the weather is shit and this town is shit. He’d rather-

 Zoro’s thoughts get interrupted as he catches smoke on the wind again. Smoke? Still? Just a whiff of if, before the storm blows the stink away again, but just enough to be a warning. It’s hard to see the tense figure waiting ahead of them through the thick rain. The figure, alone in the middle of the street, becomes clearer as they get closer and Zoro’s almost surprised that he didn’t catch the feel of their obvious fury on the wind as well.

 Sanji spots her too. “Ah~! ❤”

 “How did you do that with your mouth?” Luffy says to him.

 “RORONOA ZORO!”

 It’s the woman with Kuina’s face. She’s pushed her dork glasses up out of her face, probably because of the rain that’s soaked the rest of her through like all of them, and she looks fucking _pissed._ Yeah, those similarities to Kuina are really something else.

 The marines clatter over themselves, behind them.

 “Sarge?!”

 “What’s she doing here? Where’s the captain?”

 “Sergeant Major Tashigi!”

 Oh, she’s a fucking marine. Huh. Zoro shouldn’t like that, but he _does._ Kuina didn’t have much good to say about the Marines, Kuina actually didn’t have anything good to say about the Marines, who left the protection of their island and village almost entirely to Kuina’s father and the dojo. Having fought the matter over with his daughter so many times, Koshiro had given up nearly immediately on persuading Zoro to become a marine as well. The man instead chose to try to convince Zoro to at least _not_ become a pirate. It didn’t work, but Zoro’s teacher tried.

 The bounty hunter thing was mostly an accident at the beginning, really. Zoro began with hunting out decent opponents, while searching for the World’s Greatest Swordsman, and hadn’t said no to getting paid afterwards. What he was didn’t matter, after all, so long as he was a swordsman.

 The woman with Kuina’s face, Tashigi, is shouting at him for not telling her that he was Roronoa Zoro. (Excuse her? He wasn’t intentionally playing with her – well, he was, kind of, but only because it was funny to listen to her unknowingly insult him to his face – he was only really trying to avoid her stupid, stolen face.) Then the shitty cook starts shouting at him for insulting a lady or something. Then Luffy starts shouting because he doesn’t know what’s going on, everyone else is shouting, and he wants to know why everyone else is shouting. 

 “I SHALL TAKE WADOU ICHIMONJI BACK FROM YOU, RORONOA ZORO!” Tashigi cries, brandishing her own sword in challenge.

 If this had been the first time they’d met, instead of the third, Zoro might have been furious at that assumption. Yeah, this woman doesn’t need Kuina’s cockiness, when it turns out she’s got an arrogance all of her own. All the gods and devils couldn’t help the fool who moved Wadou Ichimonji from where its owner had set the sword last.

  Looks like he gets to fight her after all.

 “…Just try it!”

 Zoro sends Luffy and Sanji on ahead, and meets Tashigi’s one sword with his own three. Luffy drags the shitty cook screaming about chivalry off. Zoro’s captain doesn’t question Zoro’s new fight at all. Which is good because Zoro doesn’t know if he could take another offer to fuse in front of a woman with his best friend’s face.

 Tashigi isn’t bad with her sword. She’s not bad at all, but… she’s not nearly as good as he wants her to be either. Maybe it’s that Zoro’s spent these past few years fighting increasingly ruthless foes… and these past few weeks fighting monsters like the Black Cat Pirates and the Arlong Pirates  and Dracule fucking Mihawk. Anyone would look like shit next to Mihawk’s grace. But maybe Zoro’s perception is skewed at its heart by all his memories of chasing after Kuina, never once beating her before she died. Maybe it’s that that has him expecting this stranger to be _better than this._

 Was it too much to expect that this woman might be able to match him? He didn’t expect her to be Kuina come again – Kuina can’t be replaced and some part of him never wants to see this woman’s stupid fucking face ever again – but… to have a _rival_ again wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen to him, would it? Though with Mihawk to chase after, with countless monsters waiting for him in the Grand Line, he’s not exactly starving for a challenge.

 It’s no one’s business if the lack of golden light around them is a relief to him, either way.  

 Tashigi is hesitant and angry in all the wrong places. She’s pretty fast, but she’s not very strong, at least in comparison to him. She shies away from Sandai Kitetsu, consciously or unconsciously avoiding it more than his other swords, probably afraid of the cursed blade’s bloodthirst. He can tell before their swords even meet for a third time that she lacks true conviction.

 She’s not Kuina.

 Kuina is dead. She’s been dead for a long time now.

 He should be used to it by now.

 Maybe what hurts so fucking much is that he _is_ used to it by now. 

 Or maybe it's his wound from Mihawk, burning out from his chest and into his throat. God, what a fucking bastard. 

 Zoro knocks Tashigi’s sword out of her hands and slams her against a wall, Sandai Kitetsu’s blade landing warningly beside her head. This cursed sword in his hand wouldn’t mind trying to cut off this woman’s face… but it wouldn’t find any challenge in that either.

 “S… Sergeant Major Tashigi lost…!”

 “He’s going to kill her!”

 “That demon!”

 “I can’t hand this sword over to anyone, no matter what,” Zoro tells this woman, ignoring the crowd of marines watching them. “You’re not getting Wadou Ichimonji just because of that face.”

 Then, that said, he steps back and sheaths his swords. “I’m going now.”

 No one tries to stop him.

 Until Tashigi calls after him: “…WHY DIDN’T YOU CUT ME DOWN?!”

 Zoro pauses and turns around, despite the storm bearing down and the marines watching and his crew waiting for him, if only because people don’t tend to sound that pissed off about being allowed to live another day.

 Honestly, it beats him why he didn’t just cut her down. He'd never have to see her stolen face again if he did, so he’s not really sure himself why he made an effort to not even cut her, but… he gets the feeling… that he wouldn’t be cutting _her_ down if he killed her now. He’d be seeing and remembering Kuina, who’s long dead, and not this new woman herself. He can’t pay any real respect to her as a fellow swordsman when he doesn’t even know her.

 And it’d be a waste, if you ask him. She’s pretty good.

 “IS IT BECAUSE… I’M A WOMAN?!” Tashigi shouts after him, her fists clenched.

 Zoro’s mind blanks.

_…What?_

 And before he knows what the fuck is happening, this woman goes tearing off on a righteously indignant speech, pointing her finger and squinting through the rain. “You _dare_ go easy on me in a serious duel just because women aren’t thought to be as physically powerful as men?! You _dare_ believe I’d want anyone to give up their sword to me just because I have a ‘pretty face’?! How shameful do you think I am?! You’re the shameful one! You’re no better than a lecher!”

  _…What?_

 “How dare you hit on Sergeant Major Tashigi, Roronoa Zoro!” one of the marines yells out, to furious agreement from his fellows, who quickly take up similar cries and complaints.

 “You leave the sarge alone, you heart-stealing pirate!”

 “She’s working, you criminal creep!”

 “Don’t try to be a Casanova, evil demon, you’re not that good-looking!” 

  _…What the fuck is happening,_ Zoro thinks, and turns his blank stare on the marines. He doesn’t know what the fuck his expression looks like right now, but it at least has the effect of making all the marines flinch back like he snarled at them.

 Then Tashigi is in his face again – literally, she marched right the fuck up – with her sword in hand again. “Of course, I shouldn’t expect that someone like _you_ to have ever considered what it’s like wishing to have been born a man! You probably think all women are delicate flowers who have to be protected! But know that I didn’t pick up this sword for fun! I picked up this swo-”

  _That’s fucking it._

 Zoro slaps her sword aside and snarls, “It’s your damn _existence_ that bothers me, not your damn gender! If you want to be a fucking man, then be a man! I’m not stopping you! But if you just want to be a strong swordfighter, then don’t blame your own self-doubt on your womanhood!”

 God, it’s exactly something Kuina could have said when they first met. Zoro’s not going to spend any more blood, sweat, or tears on ridding someone of this bullshit – it didn’t even _work,_ in the end – especially not for a stranger. Maybe this woman has the same face as his best friend, but Zoro draws the goddamn line at this woman sounding exactly like her too. Either the face goes or the bullshit she’s spouting goes, but she can’t fucking have _both._

 Tashigi blinks at him. “What?”

 “And I didn’t call you pretty, stupid!” Zoro continues, pointing a finger. “Your face is exactly like my friend who died long ago! You’re not getting her fucking sword just because you have the same face and go on spouting the same things that she did! Stop copying her, you rip-off! Get your own fucking face and personality, while you’re picking up some real fucking conviction!”

 Tashigi stares at him.

 And then everyone starts shouting.

 Tashigi is pissed off at him for calling her a copy-cat, even saying that maybe Kuina copied _her._ Zoro yells back at her because Kuina was one of a kind and she totally came first, and he won’t fucking stand for any suggestion otherwise. And the marines in the background are shouting because now they fucking think that Zoro doesn’t think their sergeant major is beautiful and they object to that too – even though Zoro’s said jack shit about that, hasn’t wasted a single fucking thought on the subject, and refuses to waste a single fucking thought on the subject because he’s never given a shit about that crap. It’s all bullshit and Zoro fucking hates it.

 Tashigi’s sword comes for him again and Zoro has to fend her off before she guts him. Damn, he’s probably really late to meet at the Merry now and that orange-haired witch is going to fucking murder him. Unfortunately on a schedule, Zoro knocks Tashigi’s sword out of her hand even faster the second time around.

 But before he does, he can sense how much Tashigi’s conviction has changed – it’s grown maybe threefold in no time at all. She’s still too angry, too hasty to win, but all the hesitance that was holding her back is gone. Now _that’s_ more fucking like it!

 Zoro grins, before he disarms her, and grins wider when she wipes wet hair out of her eyes and snarls at him for it. There’s a hunger in her squinting eyes that he’s seen in so few people. She looks murderous. 

  _(“Splendid.”)_

 It made sense to him before, but now Mihawk’s decision to spare Zoro’s life after all makes just a little more sense. Everyone else was too far away to see how Dracule Mihawk’s eyes had lit up at the end, changing from that cold yellow to one as bright as a rising sun, or the way the man had grinned so wide and wolfish. But Zoro saw it. He’d been close enough to _taste_ the swordsman that Mihawk had once been before the monster – the graceful swordsman who’d climbed so high that he hadn’t had a blade reach him in years.

 A man _starving_ for a fight.

 Zoro has never in his life run away from a fight, but this duel with Sergeant Major Tashigi of the Marines is over. It’s twice over. So, he turns on his heel and sprints away to find his crew again. He’s never been on this side of it before, he thinks, the side of being chased to the top. Is this any of what Kuina felt when he appeared in her life?

 “BASTARD!” Tashigi screams after him.

 “Sergeant major!”

 “Sarge, are you alright?!”

 “Get him, boys!”

 God, Zoro feels like he could click his damn heels together like a fool. Kuina is dead and he hates this fucking town and he barely knows that woman behind him, they might never meet again, but who knows what tomorrow might bring? If he had to pick a way for the woman with Kuina’s face to treat him, then as an enemy to destroy and rival swordsman to beat is probably it. One Kuina was more than enough for him, but he could probably live with a Tashigi.

 The idea of ever fusing with Tashigi is so laughable now that Zoro cackles all the way down the rest of the street. Damn, he wouldn’t do that for fucking anything. She’d totally kill him first.

 

~

 

  _“L-Luffy… C…Can you hear me…?”_

_Luffy’s voice sounds so far away, but it rings clear across the water: “Yeah!”_

_“Sorry for… sorry for worrying you… I know that if I don’t become the World’s Greatest Swordsman, it’ll only embarrass you…!” It hurts to talk, it even hurts to breathe, but Zoro heaves in to spit the words out anyway: “I SWEAR THAT I’M NEVER GOING TO LOSE AGAIN! UNTIL THE DAY I FIGHT HIM AND WIN… I SWEAR TO NEVER LOSE AGAIN!”_

_He can barely see the sky, but he’d be damned if he didn’t get that promise out._

_“…Any problems, Pirate King?!”_

_Luffy laughs, delighted. “Shishishi! Nope!”_

_And before Zoro passes the fuck out, he can hear Mihawk’s voice across the waves, as clearly as if the man was right in front of him. “You make a good team,” the man observes, with mildness that seems almost at odds with the sheer monstrosity of him. “I’d like to see you two again… sometime in the future…”_

 

~

 

 Zoro’s not late to anything. The Going Merry is still waiting at the docks, because Luffy and Sanji were waylaid by another marine before getting there. Zoro even has to scoop his captain off the street, before Luffy can be caught again by some broad, cigar-chewing man half made of smoke. The marines nipping at Zoro’s heels identify the man as “Captain Smoker”.

  _Oh, the stink here is your fucking fault,_ Zoro realizes. _Asshole._

 The smoking marine reaches for them, with great billowing hands of fog, but a tall, dark, and cloaked stranger steps in his way and Zoro doesn’t step into that fight. That’s none of his fucking business. Nami is screaming at them from the railing of the Going Merry. Her voice is half-lost in the crack of lightning, the rumble of thunder, and the violent splash of waves under the howling winds. If they don’t fuck off now, this huge-ass storm will trap them there, and Zoro is under no circumstances getting stuck in shitty, smoky Loguetown.

 He hurls Luffy onboard like a javelin, satisfied when his captain smacks into the mast and wraps around it like a monkey. Sanji kicks off onto the ship before Zoro can throw him too. Zoro launches after the shitty cook, grabbing onto the railing with one hand and hanging off Merry’s side to help Usopp finally cast them off with the other. With one hard yank, they come free.

 And then a shrieking wind comes barrelling down the streets of Loguetown, with a howling pack of gales on its tail. It comes right for the Going Merry and hits them like another lightning-strike. Nami has to let go of the wheel, which spins wildly out of her control, and hit the deck as their little ship is launched out to sea almost like Zoro threw Luffy.

 It’s all Zoro can do to hang on to Merry’s railing as they fly. Then comes a moment like an eye in the storm, some seconds where their wild wind leaves them and their ship finds new forces. There’s peace enough for Usopp’s arms come over the railing, to give Zoro another handhold, and together they pull Zoro onto their buffeted ship. And once his feet hit the deck, a new wave pushes them along, and it’s Zoro turn to steady Usopp. They grin at each other.

 Sanji ran to help Nami at the helm, and together the two of them have wrestled the wheel back under control again. Meanwhile, Luffy’s used his stretchy limbs to clamber up the mast to secure some of the rigging, and he’s looking up at the nest with interest. As soon as Nami is steady, Sanji heads for Luffy with a scowl.

 “GET HIM DOWN FROM THERE!” Nami shouts. “IF HE GOES OVER, WE’RE NOT GETTING HIM BACK!”

 Goddamnit. Not again.

 But instead of launching himself into the air, Luffy laughingly slides down the mast. “I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE, NAMI! EXCEPT TO THE GRAND LINE!” He meets Zoro, Sanji, and Usopp at the deck with another wide, shiny grin. “OH, NO, NAMI! THAT ROPE IS COMING LOOSE!”

 “THEN GO FIX IT! Ugh, that damn _wind!_ Where did it even _come_ from-?”

 Zoro leaves Nami to her muttering. They spread across the rocking ship, putting Going Merry back into sailing shape. Zoro can’t say he’s ever sailed in a lightning storm like this before. He can’t say if he likes it or not yet, but there’s definitely something to be said for trying to fight a fucking storm. He could do without Nami ordering them about like a general, he thinks, but then he’d also probably be dead.

 

~

 

 At one point, he ends up fixing the rigging next to Sanji, who scowls at him and says, “How did that fight go? You better have apologized to that sweet lady, marimo!”

 Zoro remembers the way Tashigi snarled at him. Sure.

 “Hey, wait,” he realizes, as he remembers Tashigi and the marine’s anger when they thought he was treating her like a beautiful woman. Zoro scowls at the shitty cook and growls, “This is all your fucking fault.”

 He doesn’t know exactly _how_ and he doesn’t fucking care, but he’s pretty sure that all that bullshit is somehow the shitty cook’s fault.

 “What the fuck are you talking about now, dumbass?!” Sanji yells.

 But then the storm pulls them apart again, before Zoro can skewer their shitty cook. Nami sends Sanji and Usopp below deck to make sure Merry’s guts aren’t coming loose, and Zoro and Luffy help Nami above. Zoro knows shit about cartography or meteorology or whatever the fuck it’s all called, but he’s sure now that they’d all be at the bottom of the ocean if not for Nami. She’s smart as a whip and tough as all hell trying to manage this crap.  

 “I know it was one of you fuckers who took one of my tangerines! I count them, you morons!”

 Damn witch.

 Zoro then finds himself below decks, stopping a loose piece of furniture from crushing Nami’s precious tangerine trees, which have been moved into her bedroom to keep them safe. He holds the heavy shit still while Usopp secures it with deft hands.

 “Whoa, Zoro, are those your new swords?! They look _nice.”_

 Zoro grins. “Hell yeah they do.”

 “That one, uh, looks a bit dangerous, though?”

 Zoro grins wider and openly admires Sandai Kitetsu’s menace. “Nearly cut my damn arm off.”

 “What?! Are you alright?!”

 Zoro looks at him disbelievingly. He still has both his arms, doesn’t he? But Usopp looks sincerely worried that Zoro fucked himself up for a cursed sword and an arm could fall off at any moment. He throws back his head and laughs – Sandai Kitetsu is probably the least harrowing thing to happen to him today – before he grins his widest yet and answers honestly.

 “I’ve never been better.”

 

~

 

 And then he’s on deck again, Luffy’s hand gripping his shirt to keep himself from bouncing off the ship. “Whooooa!” his captain is shouting delightedly. “The ship feels like it’ll flip over!”

 It does feel like they’re being swept off at the mercy of the sea, though it doesn’t feel like Merry might break apart around them anymore. They’re riding the waves now, rather than fighting them. Zoro grabs Luffy’s wrist to keep him grounded, until his captain is steady enough to slide over to Nami at the wheel instead. Nami points out a distant golden light in the horizon, then begins explaining the beacon for ships headed for the Grand Line to their dancing captain.

 Zoro still hasn’t taken Luffy to task for nearly dying to fucking _Buggy_ yet. _Again._

 He thinks that maybe he’s not going to, because it’d be real hypocritical for him to tear into Luffy for near-death experiences while in pursuit of his own dream. They both already knew how dangerous their goals were. They both already knew they might die. This wasn’t even the first time Luffy’s nearly died on him, though it’s by far the nearest miss. The path to becoming Pirate King is a mystery to him, same as Luffy’s looping thoughts, as Zoro’s duel with Mihawk didn’t seem to make sense to anyone but him. Sanji called him an idiot, Usopp tried to stop him, and Nami might’ve done both if she’d been there too, but fuck if Zoro can personally imagine dying for any of their dreams either.

 No one with dreams like theirs ever got there because they weren’t at least a bit of a fool.

 The shitty cook brings a barrel up from below deck, and they all set their foot on it and declare their dreams. Reaching the Grand Line after all, Sanji says, calls for a celebration. So, they do that: say that they’re going to find All Blue, to become the Pirate King, to become the World’s Greatest Swordsman, to draw a map of the world, and to become a brave warrior of the seas.

 And afterwards, while Luffy grins towards that golden lighthouse in the distance, Zoro looks at Luffy.

 He’s so fucking glad that Luffy’s not dead. It’d be a damn shame, after everything they’d fought through so far, for it all to end in the last port for pirates before the Grand Line. It still only feels like they’re at their beginning. They’ve got a whole world to see still.

 He doesn’t know what he would’ve done if Luffy died on that execution platform because he wasn’t strong enough. He doesn’t know what he would’ve done, knowing that he could have saved Luffy, if he’d been willing to give fusion with that shitty cook a chance. He doesn’t even know if that unrepentant asshole would be down to dance, but… to save Luffy? Even if Sanji also thinks fusion is stupid and risky, at least with strangers, wouldn’t he do it to save their captain? Wouldn’t Zoro?

  _It’s going to come down to a choice someday,_ Zoro thinks, _at this fucking incredible rate._ Sooner or later, there’s always going to be a choice. Something will come along that’s too damn strong for any of them to fight on their own, or come down on them too quickly for any other options, before Zoro alone is strong or fast enough to take it on. The universe seems sincerely determined to make Zoro choose between fusion with a crewmember or a crewmember’s life. And if Zoro ever must choose between fusion and a friend…? If Zoro ever must crack himself open to keep the same from happening to a comrade…? Would he do it?

 He can still fight his battles on his own. He won’t ever think of relying solely on fusion.

  _Maybe it could be different,_ Zoro thinks.

 It’s a stupid thought, when they’ve the dreams of fools and are so very likely to die. When he falls, he falls hard. Zoro doesn’t _do_ shallow, short-term fusions – at least, he’s never fused with anyone besides Kuina – and any of his crewmembers could die on him as easily as Kuina did. The next time Zoro meets Mihawk, the man might cut him down permanently, instead of marking him a second time. Luffy could end up on another chopping block someday, wanting to be the next Pirate King. One half of whatever fusion he lets happen could die and it’d be a special kind of hell for whichever of them was left.

 And yet…

 Fusion was never going to be forever for him and Kuina either. It never was.

 And despite the deep, invisible wound that Kuina’s death left in his chest, Zoro has never once regretted being Zokuina. He’s never done anything he truly regretted in this life. Even when he thinks that he never should have been that fucking foolish, he can never bring himself to regret being Zokuina – all that warm golden light, everything he learned, and the knowledge of not being alone in this shitty world. His time together with Kuina, whatever form it came in, was worth every bit of pain that losing her brought him. Though he still wishes he’d never lost her at all.

 He knows now that it’s going to hurt anyway, if he loses any of the new people he’s found.

 So, he looks at Luffy, grinning in this rain, sitting at the bow of the ship in a storm. He wonders what’s in Luffy’s visions of the future, as he readjusts his own vision of the future for… new possibilities. It's not a bad vision of a future. When Luffy turns around to grin at  _him,_  a sky full of lightning behind him and ahead of them, Zoro grins back, because they’re finally on their way.

  _Maybe it could be worth it,_ Zoro lets himself think, _if it was you._

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sanji's "Do you believe in God?" line is canon and it cracked me up on my re-read. I feel like that's a common experience: "I've known Monkey D. Luffy for a day and whatever my religious leanings were before, I'm now questioning the existence of God." And, though not canon, I love "how did you SAY [something that can only be achieved in writing]?!" jokes. 
> 
> Tashigi's men thinking that Zoro is hitting on her seemed funny to me. There are so many ways that weird comments on her face could be construed. Meanwhile, Zoro, because he's Zoro, has no idea what's going on and immediately blames Sanji for this. It's definitely all Sanji's fault somehow. 
> 
> And that's a wrap! We're done now. I said that I would cover the East Blue Saga and I've covered the East Blue Saga. I know that not much fusion happened in this Fusion AU, but I've already said Zoro was probably a weird choice for that; I've been wanting to do some serious character study with this boy for a while and it shows. Part of the problem was always that there's no fight in the East Blue Saga in which Zoro would really need to fuse except the ones with Luffy's life on the line, which doesn't make sense for a fusion imo when Zoro had these fusion issues and barely knows Sanji at this point in time. 
> 
> I also kind of wanted Zoro's future fusing with one of the crew to be totally his decision. Not because someone is going to die, but because he wants to work to protect them in the future. Because he _wants_ to be with someone again. I picture Zoro first asking Luffy to try fusion in the Grand Line, outside of a fight or an accident, and it being kind of a mess at first. But they can work on it and Zoro fusing with other crew members goes from there. 
> 
> Though it'd be pretty cool to go into the Alabasta Saga and beyond (there'd be way more fusion in the Grand Line and I could see things going a bit Canon Divergence), I've got other fics to focus on now, and I'd have to re-read those arcs before I could even start outlining how the story and certain battles would change in this AU. If I do continue this, I'll probably start a series and name the sequel fic "Surely to the Sea". 
> 
> Please, I beg of you, go read Kereea's [Being Lawlu](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6583072) fic, which inspired this one, if you haven't already. It's got plenty of fusion and it's great. 
> 
> Rec this fic on tumblr? [Rec Post](https://lullabyknell.tumblr.com/post/183395859478/only-fools-rush-in-chapter-1-lullabyknell). 
> 
> And thanks for reading!


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